


The Mountain Below

by Ahab2631



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: ALL THE SPOILERS, AU of an AU, All the Secrets, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, And also about where the Qunari come from, Arguments about the Qun, Bas Fuckery, Basically all the Fuckery, Because I NEVER do that in my fics, Bisexual Female Character, Elven and elvhen, Elven ears as eroginous zones, Elvhen Fuckery, Elvhen Inquisitor - Freeform, End spoiler-y tags, F/F, F/M, Foreknowledge, Forgotten Ones, Forgotten Ones (Dragon Age), I'm gathering I have a thing for those, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, In Character... characters, It's funny when you can feel the sarcasm through text, It's like there's a pattern emerging, Just like my porn is always super explicit and hardcore, Modern Character in Thedas, Modern Girl in Thedas, Moral Dilemmas, Multi, OP Main Character, Oh probably some swearing it looks like, Playing fast and loose with the lore of ancient Thedas, Purple Hawke, Qunari Culture and Customs, Qunari Fuckery, Qunlat, Realistic Thedas hopefully, Secrets, Snark, Sort Of, Spoiler-y tags as follows, Stockholm Syndrome, Strong Female Characters, Tags and warnings will change as needed, Tamassran sexy times, Where this goes is totally (mostly) up in the air, Where was I, interdimensional tomfoolery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-07-08 00:20:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ahab2631/pseuds/Ahab2631
Summary: The Conclave is destroyed, the sky shattered by the Breach. Months pass, but there is no savior to be found, no Herald of Andraste.Why? Because the Rift she fell through opened in the heart of Par Vollen.And then... things started to get weird.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sight and Silence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8468548) by [Miajah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miajah/pseuds/Miajah). 



> Relationship TBD.
> 
> No update schedule, this is purely for fun. It's like stress relief for all the fics I take way too seriously. Uncertain if it will end up being a finished piece.
> 
> Double quotes, ““Like this,”” denote Qunlat.
> 
> To those so inclined, point out mistakes and stuff that just doesn't work with impunity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vocab to know for this chapter (stuff the MC knows):
> 
>  **Antaam** \- The military| the Qunari military  
>  **Arishok** \- Defense and offense| Triumvirate; leader of the military; in charge of defending his people, expanding Qunari territory, and is the effective head of state  
>  **Bas** \- foreigners; not of the Qun; uncivilized, ignorant, and generally terrible in every way  
> 

Worlds change.

Her world is a ceramic pot with a thick cloth overtop, a cell not two paces by two paces in the middle of a large, plain, windowless circular room, four Sarebaas and their handlers surrounding her cage, and the phalanx of soldiers behind them. All have their weapons drawn, and all keep their eyes on her, as they have for the last half hour or so, and as they will continue unfailingly to do. No one does discipline like the Qunari.

An hour or eight ago - there had been some unconsciousness and then a severe deficit of windows - her world had been blinding pain, abject confusion, a lot of running and shouting, a wall of broad, muscled gray chests, and twenty-seven spears and swords pointed at her vital organs.

The unconsciousness had kicked in right about then. That had been nice, she thought. Being awake hadn’t really been doing it for her.

The blinding pain is technically still there, but only in her hand. It comes and goes with the swell of the magic there, which she knows is important - aside from its ability to whip a street full of Qunari into a frenzy faster than you can say “holy exceptional half-nudity” - but not why. Which is a theme with any real information she reaches inward for. Everything pulls from her as if she were trying to get ahold of bits of fog.

She’d had a fairly serious concussion when she’d woken up on the green-lit street in the shadows of buildings and broad-leafed plants, naked and battered, but even if that hadn’t been taken care of by the Qunari healers, it’s rare for memory loss to be a symptom. Confusion? Yes. Trouble holding onto new information? Yes. But the only confusion she has is over the fact that she’s like a white spot in spacetime. She’s holding onto new information just fine. Much more than she should be able to, in fact. For instance, those twenty-seven weapons that had been aimed at her? She hadn’t counted them. She’d just looked up and known. The same way she knows now that one of the men in the room is going to be sick with a minor respiratory issue by tomorrow, another is working with an injured bicep that hasn’t quite finished healing, a third got laid a couple of hours ago, and she could list what all of them had eaten last were she familiar with their spices.

She doesn’t speak more than a few words of Qunlat, which isn’t a bad thing. She doesn’t know how good she is at lying, and she _does_ know how unfavorably the famously magic-phobic people would look on her being able to pull such information out of thin air.

She had been dressed while unconscious, though, so that’s nice. Qunari don’t care about nudity, but she isn’t Qunari. Amazing what a sense of security you can get from thin, white gauzy fabric.

Her wounds, which had ranged from scrapes to life-threatening gashes, and from bruises to some seriously frightening internal bleeding (her entire stomach had looked black), had all been tended to. Some of the gashes are still open, but stitched and clean and covered in an herbal salve. She assumes they would be bandaged, too, but perhaps it was feared she could use strips of cloth as a deadly weapon in a pinch. She doesn’t mind the tendency to be overcautious. In any case, Qunari treat their prisoners well. Which is why she’s not exceptionally worried yet about the lack of water. It’s only mildly sweltering in the closed, windowless room, anyway. Balmy, really.

She had recognized a few words along her journey, especially after she’d woken the second time and they had quickly determined that the dumb, blank look on her face wasn’t an act. One of the words she’d caught had been _darvaarad._ That’s a room used to house dangerous magical objects while they’re in quarantine. If that’s where she is, it doesn’t bode well. But if this is a darvaarad, they had cleaned it out in a hurry. There are no artifacts, no tables or shelves or chairs. It’s lit by lights she doesn’t recognize, that are set on small inlets in the walls all around the room. They’re pale blue and free-standing, but not magefire. They aren’t any kind of fire. Something safe to use around all things magical, she supposes.

Time passes. The guards don’t move, there is no light from which to gauge time, and no noises to be heard. Which is interesting, because if she tries, she can make out the heartbeats around the room. She also hears it when someone passes gas “silently.”

She has to pee. She has had to pee for a very long time, in fact.

It isn’t _just_ that she doesn’t want to pee in front of thirty-four people, it’s also the fact that they have what’s arguably already a really shitty job standing there like gargoyles waiting to spring to life should she sneeze in a concerning manner. But with no way of knowing when her circumstance is going to change… well. Living isn’t for the faint of heart.

She utters a sincere apology to the room at large before she quickly squats down and shifts the hem of her long tunic/short dress. They’re soldiers, so they _might_ know what the word means, but they aren’t exactly going to give her anything to go on either way.

She manages to keep her exclamation of relief largely silent.

The outfit she’s in is a sleeveless white wrap with red trim that she somehow knows is worn exclusively by Qunari initiates. She doesn’t know if that means she’s in some area run by the priesthood, or if that was where she had crash-landed, or of it had just been what was handy when the healers had finished with her. It does seem strange they’d put her in it, though. The outfit has a place. She isn’t it. Qunari don’t like it when things aren’t in their proper places. Had someone just panicked?

Naturally, the door to the room opens about thirty seconds after she finishes her business and returns the cover to the pot. She swears to herself with impunity, but quietly.

The newcomer speaks one word, and a chill goes over her. She knows his voice.

The guards part, their attention on her unwavering, and there stands a man she knows to be the Arishok. Because she also knows that he had been the Sten who had traveled with the Hero of Ferelden during the last Blight. She knows he liked cookies, and kittens, that he named a Bas as Kadan, that he’s an exemplary Qunari in every way, and that if he considers you an enemy, you are well within your rights to quell. In fact, if you’re sane, that's exactly what you'll do.

Interestingly, she also realizes that she knows everything about everyone else who had been on that journey with the Hero, too.

The Arishok - Sten, to her - is broad, tan, has the most naturally downturned mouth she can conceive of, and those half-jowls are there. His muted white hair has grown so long it reaches the bottom of his considerably large pectoral muscles where it lays over one shoulder, and he wears the oversized pauldrons and otherwise simple garb of his predecessor, but in brown, rather than red.

Considering he looks like he’s frowning when he smiles with joy, she finds him somewhat difficult to read.

He begins in Qunlat. She understands just enough to appreciate that she is probably well and truly fucked: “mage,” “foreign spy,” “demon,” a word for “one who brings death,” and on the bright side, the word for a temple of healing and recovery. Or the place where they take unruly captives for re-education.

Such a non-threatening term, “re-education.”

So now she has a decision to make. She’d been thinking about it, of course, but it seems right now that she is largely a creature of impulse. Sort of a “go with the moment, listen to your gut” deal.

Does she play dumb? Best probable outcome: she would be converted and live her life under the Qun, mucking out horse stalls or something.

Does she slap some cards on the table up front? Probable outcomes: immediate execution, eventual execution, or, and this is the one she personally wants to bank on, something _other_ than dying of a sword or eventual boredom.

Such a panic- and terror-free way to put it, “eventual boredom.”

Easy decision in the end, then.

“Arishok,” She greets calmly, with a respectful dip of her head. “As I suspect you’ve been told, I don’t speak Qunlat. I mean, maybe about as much as a three year-old, but I don’t really know how fast your kids learn, so that’s more of a ballpark.”

He is a robot. Sten is a robot. There is nothing on his face.

“What are you?” He asks flatly. Or threateningly, or jovially, she really can’t tell. Perhaps he thinks this is all a delightful joke.

“Uh....” She looks down at herself. “A human?”

“I do not enjoy Bas humor.”

She laughs weakly. “That’s fortunate then, because I don’t think I’m probably very funny. I’m a person. I don’t know why I was naked,” because _that_ is really the offending issue on the table, “I have no idea why the f--” she stops herself from swearing, “why I have _this_ in my hand,” said says, holding up her right palm and pointing to it, “or how I came to be… wherever it is I am. Helpfully, I also seem to have no idea _who_ I am. Which I find especially frustrating, since I know....” Her eyes dart around. “Does anyone else in here speak Common?”

“No.” No real intonation, nothing.

She picks up directly where she left off, “Since I know who you are and that you like tiny cute baby animals. And that the Hero of Ferelden used to give you just about every nice painting she found, that you nearly had sex with Morrigan, god help you, you had a warrior’s bond with Alaine’s mabari, and that when no one was looking, you would scratch his belly.”

He pauses.

Slowly, he walks forward.

She is fairly certain she goes white in the face. She doesn’t step back, but it’s not the easiest thing she’s abstained from. In theory, anyway.

“Explain.” His voice is quiet. And also, somehow, much more terrifying.

She scratches the back of her head nervously - and finds long, thick, soft hair, which she pulls over her shoulder with a look of confusion. It’s white. Why is it white?

“Er… I’m not sure how to give you information I literally don’t have, sir.”

“Where do you come from?” He moves along very efficiently, this man.

“Most recently? An angry green hole in the middle of a street. Prior to that, I....” There is… a feeling. A heavy pull, a sinking and collapsing in her chest. She puts a hand over her eyes with an involuntary groan and sees flashes of brown stone and blue light, a sky of shifting colors, and flickers of countless images, smells, feelings all passing so quickly that they are senseless blurs. Green skies and pathways, livid like the mark… no, the Anchor. The…

“The Breach,” she whispers to herself.

But there’s more. A face, a wolf's, horrible and terrifying with dripping needle teeth and too many eyes, all glowing red. Black fur like ink seeping into the air, and from every inch of it, menace. The image is there and gone in an instant, but the feeling it imparts is so sickening, so charged, that without meaning to, she slides down the side of the cage, a gutted look on her face. Every set of eyes in the room follows her.

Sten, at his leisure, crouches down, elbows on his knees. “What breach?” He demands. He’s losing patience.

“What....” She looks up at him, dazed. “What?” He had asked her something just then, but the word has turned to fog like everything else. Breach, that was what it had been. What, like breaking through something?

Her look turns helpless and slack. “I have no idea.”

His jaw twitches. He looks at her another moment, then stands, turns, and leaves, saying something in Qunlat on his way out. She recognizes a word: Ben-Hassrath.

Interrogators.

 

*     *     *

 

They don’t use pain. Which is smart of them. Pain can have its place in getting information, just like fear, but if you want that information to be more or less accurate, and if you want your captive to feel anything toward you but hatred (also smart), much better to use another method. Like making them think you’re simpatico, for instance. Then again, when you can tell right away if someone’s lying, it probably makes the decision about whether to escalate things pretty easy.

She wishes The Iron Bull were here. But he isn’t. This Ben-Hassrath is not a face she recognizes, but she understands the look of someone who knows what to see. Who makes note of everything and knows how to piece it together. Who can play any role masterfully.

So basically it doesn’t matter what she does or what she feels toward him, she isn’t going to know who he is. He probably doesn’t even know who he is. Not because he’s Qunari, but because to play a part that well, you have to believe it, and when you’ve played too many, it can get hard to keep track. She imagines they’re trained to deal with that, but no one can keep going forever.

There’s a difference, too, between a Ben-Hassrath who has been living as a Bas for the last few years and a Ben-Hassrath who is in Qun territory. She can’t put her finger on exactly what it is, because he plays a Bas just fine, but it’s there.

Her personal Ben-Hassrath sits with her in their usual room, dark and brown and small and empty but for two simple chairs that are always waiting in the middle, facing one another. There’s a window on the wall behind him, but it’s always shuttered. Each day, the two of them sit and have “chats.” Today they’re both sitting backwards on their seats.

“So let’s review,” Ben says. He’s smaller than a lot of Qunari - still the physique of an underwear model - and his face has more of a human look to it than a lot of others. All around, an excellent choice to butter up a soft, ignorant foreigner in an alien land. 

This is our routine, reviewing where we are so she can tell him if anything has changed. “No memory of who you are, where you come from," she nods after each item, "why you’re here, or what you look like. Good so far?”

“Your memory is positively spectacular, Ben.” He quirks a smile as if to himself, and she can’t help but marvel at how good he is. “But I’m still a little nauseous over the ears, so if you don’t mind.” It’s not that they’re long and pointed. She has the surreal experience of both having expected that, and having expected the opposite. It’s that they’re apparently a major erogenous zone just left to dangle free in the air for all manner of breezes and brushes by freakishly tall gray people and _motes of dust_ to assault at random.

Ben brought her a headscarf one day, to use to wrap them securely against her head, safely away from the torment. It hadn’t helped. Quite the contrary, in fact.

She had gathered from that day that he had a good sense of smell, because before long whenever they had “bothered” her, his heart rate had spiked and this incredible sweet-musky scent had wafted her way. It had reminded her of cider and spices. And it absolutely hadn’t been awkward _at all._

Since then, Ben has smelled of fresh sex every time they meet.

Clever boy.

His smile grows and he acquiesces, “Of course.” He lifts his hand, ticking off a second finger, though there hadn’t been a first. “Your senses got considerably stronger after you woke up, but topped out two days ago.”

She nods, a gesture he returns as he touches his third finger. “You’re having long-term and short-term memory problems, but only about specific things--”

“Like not this list, for instance.”

His smile is perfectly indulgent, but his smell doesn’t match it. No, what his scent tells her is that she needs to back the fuck down and show him her stomach immediately, or he’s going to snap.

Ben is not her friend. Ben is not here to be her friend. Ben may act amiable and light, but her life is probably solely in his hands, and whether he lets her see that he can’t stand her or not, that will be the case if she acts like the flippant, disrespectful foreigners native Qunari know and hate.

She sobers, turns her chair around the right way, and sits facing him respectfully. Not rigid, but respectful. She nods for him to go on.

He quirks an eyebrow at her, and smells again at odds with his demeanor. But the smell this time is less discouraging, at least. And strangely, something in it makes her heart beat faster, but not out of fear.

“Your disorientation persists," he says, "but though you’re missing information about yourself, you have more than your share about the world, the past, and others.”

She gives a dip of her chin and an easy, “Correct.”

“Your information is limited to some people, and you don’t know how to predict whether or not a given person will be a blind spot.”

Again she nods.

He shifts on his chair, looking at her. “Any new flashes of anything?”

She frowns and shakes her head. “Just that same senseless jumbles and feeling of wandering. Paths and doors and...." She trails off. She doesn't like to think about it. "I'm sorry.”

She gets the distinct impression that she’s climbing out of the hole. Barely. And that the ground under her hands is now only about eighty-three percent give. This is a considerable improvement from a moment ago.

“Any more insight into the one you had in the cell?”

“Only the guesses.” She looks down at her right hand.

“...Has it been bothering you much?” He asks gently. Ever concerned with her comfort, this one.

She curls her fingers over it. “It's been quiet since last night.” Her voice is sober. It’s hurt to some degree since she first woke up. At best it’s an aggressive ache, but that isn’t the majority of the time. The majority of the time it informs her that she has an exceptionally high pain tolerance, because she’s fairly certain anyone else would be out of their mind from it by now. Except a Qunari. She’s probably soft as an infant compared to them. How they have not conquered the world yet she does not know. This interview today is the longest period of “calm” she’s had from it so far.

Last night she had passed her limit. It had been so bad that she had spent most of it screaming and sobbing off and on while it shot green and white sparks like slag from an erupting volcano. The only other prisoner in the small dungeon she’d been moved to had alternated between bellowing for help and bellowing at her to shut up. One of the Antaam, the army and guard, had eventually given her a potion. She had taken it without question, that’s how bad it had been. It had knocked her out, and she doesn’t know for how long, because except for the tiniest sliver if she’s in this room at the right time of day, she hasn’t caught so much as a glimpse of the sun for… two weeks? Something like that, she figures. Qunari take care of their prisoners, yes. But she isn’t exactly a normal prisoner.

She goes on. “I remember what I fell out of. That tear. It was the same color as this. So was the place I saw in my mind. The exact same green.” She shifts as if uncomfortable with what she’s about to say. “When the Arishok came into that first room, he said a few words I understood. One of them was ‘demon.’”

He tips his head, waiting for her to go on.

“I know this is a deductive leap, but I’m obviously not a demon or abomination, you’ve had me checked.” Obvious to her, anyway. Benny doesn’t strike her as the type to know until he _knows._ Which actually is kind of funny given his job, at least in a way. “And I have this weird itch.” She hesitates and looks down, running a finger idly over her right palm. “The tear… are there demons coming out of it, Ben-Hassrath?”

He sits up straight in a fluid, nonchalant motion, and something behind his eyes shifts. She thinks she’s seeing the real him, or at least a sliver, for the first time since they met.

“If there were, what would that mean to you?” He prompts. “What would it suggest?”

“Well… is it....” She rubs nervously at the back of her neck. “Is it possible that on the other side of that tear....” This is going to get her killed. But too late, all in. She doesn’t want to rusticate in this box another two weeks, if for no reason other than the fact that a sense of urgency is growing under her skin every day. “Is it possible it’s the Fade?”

Oh, there he is, peeking out. His eyes are the sharpest things she has ever… well, you get the idea.

“What would all that have to do with what you saw?”

She gives him a look of slight exasperation. He’s been talking to her long enough to know that they both know neither of them is stupid. “Same green, Ben-Hassrath.”

“But as you just pointed out, you were found to be free of demonic presence.”

She sighs tightly. “First of all, I know your people don’t believe it’s that simple. And second… I have no idea, ok? Maybe… maybe I’m something new. Maybe I got dragged in there. Maybe I _forced_ my way in. I don’t know.” Dangerous ideas? Sure. But you don’t lie to someone like him. He and whoever he reports to have likely guessed far worse, anyway.

“Anything new on the wolf you said you might have seen in there?” She'd said the face had felt connected to the place, but whether by memory or emotion she didn't know.

She gives a small shake of her head. “I still just feel sick every time I remember it." She puts an involuntary hand to her stomach.

He looks at her for a long time. Then he leans back in his chair, adjusting his arms where they’re crossed on its back. “You get feelings. What do they tell you? What do _you_ think is the right option?”

Her eyes slip down and she considers. Then her brow furrows and she looks back up. “Was there someone else when I fell out? Behind me.”

He’s keeping those blades in his eyes sheathed so well, she can’t even see them.

“Look,” she says all in a rush, “I don’t know what’s happening, but I have this feeling that something is _wrong,_ something bigger than this town or village or city or wherever we are, bigger than this mark,” her mouth stutters over the word like it’s shifting sand under her feet, “and it’s getting more and more wrong every day. There’s something screaming at me that I have to _move,_ but I don’t know where or why or how, I just… it’s frenetic, and it’s exponentially louder all the time, and if I were a betting woman, I’d say it has to do with whatever the hell this is in my hand.

“Now, I know I’m on slippery ground, here. I know why you pretend to be nice to me, to like me. I know that based on what you see in this room, I live, or I die. Or I get fed qamek and spend the rest of my life breaking rocks or chopping wood or… brushing cows, I don’t know. But Ben-Hassrath,” she leans forward, setting her arms on her knees, _”I don’t care.”_   She pauses. “...Almost. Anyway my point is, I think there’s something I’m supposed to be doing, a role I’m supposed to be filling,” the choice of phrasing is naked pandering, “and if I can’t soon.... Then it doesn’t matter if I live or if I die,” she ends with a helpless shake of her head. _“Nothing_ matters.”

For a long time, Ben just looks at her. Studying, thinking, both at once, running advanced calculus in his head and remembering the really good breakfast he had that morning, she doesn’t know.

Abruptly, he stands. “Wait here. If you need anything, knock on the door.”

 

*     *     *

 

He knew she wouldn’t need anything. She doesn’t eat, she barely drinks, and she almost never needs to relieve herself. But by the time he comes back, she wishes she had needed to do all three. And maybe twenty other things, she doesn’t even care what. She’s done jumping jacks, push-ups and crunches, she’s stretched and run laps around the small room forward and then backwards. Usually she's content to be still, but she gets these bursts of energy sometimes that make her feel as restless as a toddler.

She’s sitting on the floor against the wall, knees bent up, her head softly and rhythmically hitting it when he finally comes back. She scrabbles to her feet and stops herself from loudly declaring her relief. It isn’t hard, really, because before Ben is properly in the room, more bodies are following. Large bodies. In armor, with large weapons and unamused, watchful eyes. Six of them. Who close the door and spread out to surround her and Ben.

Well… shit.

Ben is carrying a long, thin box made of silvery wood inlaid with gold. The pattern is Qunari, but the color combination is unusual. At least as far as she knows, which probably doesn’t count for much.

He nods her over, and with a wary glance at his new friends, she does as she’s told. Gently, he sets the box on his chair and opens it. Inside is a smooth, dark metal rod, polished to a middling shine. It’s as big around as a male Qunari’s thumb and maybe a foot long. His eyes stay trained on it as he picks it up from its velvet bed and holds it out to her on the flats of his hands, like it’s a carrot, and her a horse prone to nipping.

“When our children are young,” he explains, “they are tested. This,” he nods down to the rod, “is how mages are identified.”

Her stomach turns and the skin of her face grows cold. The air contracts around her like a shell, so much so that she almost feels claustrophobic.

“Take it,” he says simply.

She eyes it warily, fearfully, but slowly reaches out. Gingerly, she plucks it from his hands, careful not to touch his skin, and wraps it in a loose fist, turning it up so she can look at it.

She waits. Ben waits. The constipated guards wait.

Bewildered, she looks up to him. “Am I supposed to do something? Or…?”

After another moment watching the cylinder, he looks from it to her with something like a triumphant smile. He produces a little brown bottle, from where she doesn’t know because the guy has like no clothing on, and holds it out to her. It’s the same kind she had been given last night.

She looks at Ben in confusion.

“The only truly foolproof way to test you,” he says, watching her every twitch, “is to do so while you’re unconscious. You can’t fight it then. No one can.” There’s something eager in his face. Anticipation? Excitement? Is he the sort who likes to pull wings from flies? Did he make a bet with his best friend that she totally _wasn’t_ a witch?

She pauses.

She takes the little bottle, and with one last glance at Ben, works the cork out with her thumb, says, “Cheers,” and kicks it back.

Arms catch her as she plummets to the floor like a redwood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who read AMV, yes I absolutely borrowed some stuff.
> 
> If that makes no sense to you... carry on!
> 
> \- - - - 
> 
> 1/23/19: I'm getting more clear on plot deets, so: changed the flashes of what she saw in the cell, minor references other places. All changes and additions are unedited/first draft.  
> 2/20/19: A hair more clarification on the flashes of stuff she sees in the cell and with Ben. I'm doing this thing where you outline a character and plot and don't just wing it through the entire story, never tried it before. It's working wonders, _who would have thought._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New vocab:
> 
>  **Arigena** \- Sex, labor, and health| Triumvirate; leader of the workers; in charge of ensuring public health and the people’s physical needs are met  
>  **Ariqun** \- Science and education, Qun specialist| Triumvirate; leader of the priesthood; responsible for pushing scientific advances and ensuring the Qun is taught  
>  **Arvarad** \- mage handlers  
>  **Salasari** \- The Qunari Triumverate  
>  **Viddasala** \- Do Not Fuck With| Ben-Hassrath triumvirate; Leads the “Dangerous Purpose” branch; handles conversion of foreigners, reeducation of dissidents, and collection and quarantine of magic.

When she wakes up, it’s in an actual room, with a bed and a little dresser, and decorations, and an open window with gauzy purple curtains. There’s no door in the doorway, and yet another large gray man is standing at attention outside of it, but she’s one to count her blessings. For instance, her lips are not sewn shut. Surely that must be a good sign.

However, perhaps somewhat like Ben, she is very much a “proof is in the pudding” sort of gal. She’ll believe she isn’t going to spend the rest of her life drugged out of her mind and wearing a literal collar and chain when she hears it. From someone who has the authority to say it.

Her guard says a few words, loudly. Apparently they mean, “It’s awake,” because a Qunari woman and man, dressed in clothing made of actual fabric and bereft of any sort of weaponry, come into her room and retrieve her. Each have a second set of much smaller horns under the first.

She must have done something right, because when she is beckoned and follows the pair out of the room, they are accompanied by a sole, single guard. Not three. Not eight. She sees people as they walk down a simple, light, earthy hallway, sunlight streaming down through openings in the ceiling, then out onto an equally simple parapet whose sides hardly come up to her hips. It overlooks a city so beautiful she sucks in a breath and her feet quit the field entirely. The guard behind her gives a quiet little growl she's obviously not meant to hear, but doesn’t poke her to get her moving, and in only a moment the other two have stopped and turned around.

The buildings below her are squared and made of light-colored packed earth. Everything, even the roads and alleys, are clean and well-kept. Verdant plants are everywhere, as is color. She’s never seen so much color, she thinks, jewel tones and vibrant fabrics, sheer and opaque, some embroidered, some drifting gently in a breeze she doesn’t feel. Color is set into the edges of the streets, and the bases of the buildings painted in a sheer pigment to match, which fades gradually and seamlessly into the earthen color. Doorways and window shutters stand out like jewels, open to let the air in.

People walk everywhere, from building to building, street to street. I see two women chatting near a building, people smiling or nodding in greeting, frowning in thought. There is a woman carrying a giant basket of what looks like colorful scarves or silks, and another with what’s obviously laundry. A tidy stall is stacked with baskets of fresh bread, and another next to it with fruit. As I watch, a man walks up, looks over what’s offered, and simply takes an oval loaf, a large purple fruit, and several smaller ones that look like oranges, exchanging a nod with the attendants. There’s a square not far from us, and in its center is a pristine white fountain, its water clear and bluer than the sky, the tiles that line it making it glimmer.

In the distance, the city abuts what looks like dense jungle, and over everything runs a massive, beautiful aqueduct, smaller chutes running off of it every fifty feet or so. In the distance to her right is what she can only assume is farmland, the soil rich and dark. It just isn’t laid out like normal farmland, all open spaces with nothing but dead, dry soil between the plots. Instead, they’re smaller and dotted closely among buildings, and in each plot grows a multitude of different plants. Vegetables and flowers and vines, even trees, though there are concentrated areas of those, too. Companion plants, crop rotation, maybe natural pest prevention. She sees what must be beehives, and a few head of livestock freely roaming and picking at the ground.

The male Qunari with her wears draping white pants that sit snug and low on his hips. Gold is woven sparingly through the waist, and a delicate rope wraps around it, one of the intricate knots the Qunari are so good at resting below his hip. Its ends hang heavily down his leg and move in waves any time he shifts. A broad, thin metal band of the same color gold lays wide over his shoulders and ends in a gentle point above his sternum, and two more simple bands of it are on each of the horns, one on each of the bottom ones. More ropework in an almost faded sort of purple encases his biceps and the tops of his forearms.

He is smiling softly at her as she takes the in everything below them, literally open-mouthed.

“Par Vollen,” he says.

She looks at him with wide eyes.

...She supposes that does explain how Salasari one of three had been conveniently on hand to talk to the weird Fade monster.

They carry on and she is bathed. Flower petals are involved. So are oils. It’s done in a massive, breathtaking bathhouse which has apparently been cleared out for her. Her hair is gently toweled dry, then done up comfortably and gracefully to stay off her neck, and she is dressed in an outfit that she is positive qualifies her as three quarters naked. It’s like a simplified antaam-saar, but with less fabric and almost no decorative rope. But it’s how everyone dresses here, and if it’s normal to the society, then.... Shrug. It’s normal. It feels heavenly having all the extra skin exposed to the slightest of breezes, anyway. And to be honest, she doesn’t hate the view. Her physique is as good as the Qunari’s, if a little softer.

She’s taken next to a huge - almost cathedral-huge - room filled with books, where the man who had smiled at her waits at a large table. He ushers her over, and apparently the order of the day now is figuring out how much of the language she knows. Which is, quite seriously, nothing but a generous handful of words. The written language is next, and of that, she recognizes nothing. Whenever she has to stop because of the pain in her hand, he waits patiently. When she doubles over and grits her teeth against it, when it leaves her panting, he puts a gentle hand on her back. Then they just start up again when it passes.

As he’s closing the last book in obvious preparation for the end of whatever this was, something interesting happens.

He starts to quote the Qun. Some little parable to say, “Hey, it’s ok that we accomplished absolutely nothing, because some deep philosophical reason,” it sounds like.

But she finishes the quote.

She can’t guess which of them looks more surprised.

He begins another line. Which she again finishes. He tries a harder one. It is not hard. What’s more strange is that she knows what each of them means.

He’s smiling at her incredulously.

“Rasaan,” he says, a hand going to his chest.

She smiles back (he’s contagious), and opens her mouth to happily reciprocate, only to remember she has no name to give. She shrugs apologetically.

He waves it away, very much “don’t worry about it.” Then with a laugh, he puts his arm around her and walks her out of the room. And down the hall. Like that. With his arm around her.

She’s panicking, until they pass a Qunari woman going the other way who does nothing but give the man a comfortable nod, and she remembers: Qunari don’t have sex with their friends. For the ones raised in under the Qun, as this guy likely was, that concept probably doesn’t even exist. He likes her, he is displaying affection, and it means absolutely nothing more than that. How wonderfully, perfectly uncomplicated.

She has a moment of weightlessness as she feels her world shift. Then she gives a laughing little huff, puts her arm around him, and leans her head into his shoulder. They stay comfortably that way until they enter the open air and it becomes clear they are walking directly to a set of three giant, open sparring rings, and dread settles in like an old, stubborn venereal disease. Disgusting, but accurate.

She stops and looks up at Rasaan in bewilderment. She tries to think of what to say. ‘I’m a woman, you don’t let women fight, why is that big guy in vitaar obviously waiting for me to walk into the ring?’ But she doesn’t even know the words for “man” or “woman.”

She points to herself and shakes her head, “Aqun-athlok.” ‘I’m not a woman who lives as a man.’ She gestures pointedly to key parts of her outfit.

He looks at her like she’s just stared quacking, then realization dawns and he tips his head back and laughs. His adams apple is like the size of her knee. She stares on, disgruntled, while he gets ahold of himself.

Hand on his stomach and eyes alight, he shakes his head and says, “You are a delight.”

“Wh-- You speak Common?” She asks. Shrilly.

“I speak every language in Thedas,” he says with a warm - and still amused - smile.

She experiences a moment of unreality. To her left is a Qunari as she knows them: stoic, expressionless, unamused. In front of her is a Qunari who smiles warmly and readily and openly displays affection.

He tips his head to the ring. “Off you go.” Then he turns and walks away. No instruction on what to do, no, “I’ll be back at five to pick you up for soccer practice.”

She gawps after him. The muscles on his back move with each step, and his intricately half-braided snowy hair wafts in a gentle breeze. She can hear the bastard chuckling to himself in starts as he goes.

A shadow falls over her, and she looks in its direction to find the vitaar guy literally looming over her. He’s at least two and a half feet taller than her, which is more than most. Yet she had seen an elf on the way to the bath earlier, and she had dwarfed him. Er, so to speak.

Vick - better than “Vit” - says a word she doesn’t know and holds a sword out to her. When she doesn’t take it, he gives something between a growl and a sigh and grabs her wrist, turns her hand up, and presses the hilt into it. Then he turns and walks back into the ring, not even waiting to see if she’s taken it.

You know what’s a really cool thing? Muscle memory. Because she instantly realizes that her muscles? They know this weapon.

She smiles, looking down at the sword, and the expression stays on her face as she follows him into the ring.

 

*     *     *

 

That first sword, then daggers, a sword and shield, a bladed staff, a battleaxe, and exactly eight Qunari warriors later, they have gathered a considerable crowd.

Her stamina outstrips theirs.

So does her strength.

Her speed makes them look like they’re moving through tar.

In fact, the longer they go, the better she gets. The faster, the more excited, the better at reading their movements and using them to her advantage.

She’s facing down three antaam, a silvery axe in each of her hands. She gives a twirl of one as she watches all three of them without moving her head. The one behind and to the right of her will come first, swinging his sword either at her middle or calves, then the one in front will raise his battleaxe above his head and bring it down--

A voice breaks through the quiet: “Enough.” It’s the Arishok. His voice is calm and unperturbed. Bored-sounding. Sten doing Sten.

The soldiers relax their stances and back away from her, and the Arishok steps into the ring.

She pales. She knows Sten. She likes him. She doesn’t want to fight him. But he walks up and holds his hand out for the axes. She gives them to him, confused. He wants to fight, she can literally smell it.

He stands in front of her and looks her up and down, assessing.

Oh. It’s to be hand-to-hand. Abruptly, she’s excited.

She feels his readiness, the change in his blood. His body gives nothing away, not his pulse or his shoulders or his hips, and her excitement swells.

But then the Arishok glances over her shoulder. He gives a small nod, and just... leaves. She turns around to find Rasaan. He gives her a friendly little smile, but something about it is off.

The crowd is already disbursing, chatting among themselves and casting glances back at her, and as they thin, she walks out to meet Rasaan, eyes wary.

He takes her to the bath house, which is again deserted, and motions for her to get at it.

She stares at him. He stares back at her. Then she doesn’t know where to look, and funnily enough can’t think what she’s supposed to do with her hands, because suddenly they’re just hanging at her sides and that feels terribly awkward.

He says a word, and when she looks up, he’s turning his back to her. When she doesn’t move, he says another word. “Get on with it” seems safe to assume, so with a quick glance around, she strips, folds the clothes as neatly as she can, and does as she was shown earlier: uses a pitcher of water and a cloth to wash the grime off of her and rinse her scalp, then slips into the water, little blue-purple flowers and tiny, deep green leaves moving with the ripples. Rasaan walks to the nearest wall and lowers himself to sit against it. With him there and her in the water, he can’t see anything.

He starts speaking, and they’re words she recognizes. When he stops and looks at her expectantly, she asks, “Are we not speaking Common anymore?”

He shakes his head. One of his knees is up, his arm propped on it comfortably. “You need to learn. No one will speak Common around you any longer.”

That’s obviously meant to be the last she hears in her language, but she still asks uncertainly, “Am I being converted? Or did I do something wrong out there or... something?”

All he does is give her a little smile, then repeat what he said earlier. After a few words, he gestures for her to take over, so she does. She keeps glancing at him to see when she should stop, but he never looks like he wants her to. She doesn’t know what she’s saying, it’s all in Qunlat, but the words keep coming, the same as every shift and bend of her body had in the fighting ring.

As she goes on, he sobers. She realizes she hasn’t seen him with a truly serious look on his face until now, and something about it is almost unsettling. And strangely, she wonders if he’s alright. Hurting or in trouble, maybe.

The bath is deep enough for her to stand up in away from the square-staired corners, so eventually, eye contact telling her it’s ok, she starts to wash properly as she carries on talking. When she’s done, but before she’s gotten to her hair, Rasaan motions for her to back up to the edge and turn around. He walks over, hikes up his pant legs, and dangles his feet in the water, then starts to massage her back and arms with an oil that pushes heat deep into her muscles. To loosen up from the fighting, she realizes. It’s hard to concentrate while he does it; the man has a gift. When he’s finished, he washes and oils her hair. She can’t help but wonder if all Qunari are this… handsy. She likes the guy, she really does, and God knows he’s as beautiful as the rest of them, but they literally just met like four hours ago and he’s basically giving her a bath.

She gets to a part in her monologue that she recognizes. It’s a piece of the Qun. Is she....

Is she reciting the entire Qun?

After he gets up and turns his back on her again, she dries and dresses in the fresh outfit he indicates, this one similar in design to the last but largely a deep, rich sapphire blue, and attempts to replicate her earlier hairstyle, but gives up and just braids enough of it down her back to keep it out of her face. He walks her down the hall and back into the massive library, passing other Qunari along the way, including a group of at least fifteen elves and a couple humans, all dressed in the clothing of viddathari. They look at her curiously. All the while, she does not stop talking.

When she starts having to pause to clear her throat in the library, Rasaan pours her crystal-clear water from a tall, elegantly curved pitcher.

The air changes with the setting of the sun, and cools as the moon passes through the sky. He takes them for a walk more than once. He eats. At one point he starts looking over some papers and making notes, and she falters, but he just motions for her to continue. She paces as she talks, or sits cross-legged on the floor. She stretches, or walks around the room looking at inscrutable titles on the spines of the hundreds upon hundreds of books that line the walls. She runs her fingers gently over gauzy, tissue-thin curtains, carvings and accents on furniture, and small colorful objects whose uses she can only guess.

The sun rises, and though Rasaan has allowed her to take breaks - brief moments, only as long as she needed to strongarm her vocal cords back into cooperation - it has still been ceaseless.

She missed a night of sleep, but she isn’t tired, not at all. Someone comes to speak to Rasaan when the sky is still pale. He tells her to continue through it, even while he converses. Two women come in with pearly rope and weave it onto her in knots and ties. Then one of them does her hair, pulling it away from one side of her face. They work at her, fingers moving quickly, for probably half an hour, and she gabbles on the whole while. They exchange more than one look, but being Qunari, it’s probably more curiosity than anything.

Through the rest of the day and the next night she speaks, her throat growing rough. Well into early afternoon, the words stop. No more will come to her. She searches for them, but there’s just nothing there. Brow furrowed, she looks over at Rasaan where he stands near a bookshelf, leafing through the pages of a blue tome, and finds him already staring back, that serious expression from the bath house on his face again. Then suddenly it’s gone, and he nods and gestures for her to follow him. He leads her back to her room, ushers her in, and manages to convey rather warmly that if she wants anything, she should tell the guards - two, this time - at her door.

All she really does the rest of the day is lean out the window - she's still not tired. A breeze is coming off the ocean she can see in the far distance to her left, and she doesn’t grow tired of watching the people below just… living. They’re so normal. She supposes it’s because she only knows of the Qunari what every other foreigner does: their military. The antaam are the only ones who set foot outside of Qunari territory, and they’re all intimidating, and male, and generally about as lively and personable as heavy, misshapen rocks. She wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Qunari have no word for “small talk.” Which is really terribly far from an idea she hates.

The people she sees below are more stoic than most Bas, yes. They don’t talk as much, and without exception, they move with purpose - no,  _presence_ \- regardless of their pace. But below her she sees friends, families, loves. Shared jokes, embraces and hospitality, and even once, two people who are obviously either annoyed with one another or just don't like each other, but they still nod in passing. Just… churlishly. She sees a beautifully dressed woman pushing a man in a surprisingly well-constructed wheelchair who is slumped and drooling. She speaks softly and brightly to him, pointing things out as they pass.

At one point late in the day, when she's trying to figure out why the streets have suddenly all but emptied, the few Qunari who are still outside stop at some signal she obviously misses, retrieve small, austere cushions - one from under the stand she's minding, and another is handed one from a man in a nearby house - and settle themselves onto the ground. They close their eyes, take deep, slow breaths, and they meditate. This goes on for the better part of hour, leaving her awestruck. Eventually, after several rounds of, 'Ok, _now_ they have to be almost done,' she finds she can't help but join in, and sits under the window.

When the sky is more dark than light, Rasaan comes back. The woman who had first come to her room with him is back, too, but she waits outside as he enters with a confident little smile, carrying a small bowl, shallow and simple and rough, carved from dark wood. The end of what looks like a thin paintbrush is sticking out of it. He gestures for her to sit on the bed and hold out the underside of her arm to him. When she looks up uncertainly, he just gives her a reassuring nod.

One of the guards turns his head just slightly toward them, as if he wants to look over his shoulder. It’s the equivalent of a Bas soldier up and starting a dance routine at his post.

Rasaan uses the brush to put a miniscule dot of thick, deep red paint on her arm, then his eyes go immediately to hers and he watches her intently.

She looks confused. A hint of the expression shifts to his face. He makes the dot fractionally larger, and scrutinizes her closely again.

Five iterations later, when the deep crimson spot is roughly the size of the pad of her thumb, his eyes linger on it, serious and studying. Then abruptly he gives her a smile and leaves. The woman stays until dawn. Until Rasaan comes back.

He has the little bowl again, and a plate of food. He offers it, but she declines politely, and the painting routine starts again. It ends this time when the whole underside of her forearm is solid red. It turns perfectly opaque as it dries.

Then they go on a run. With a squadron of twenty soldiers who follow in two perfect lines. The silence with which they move, all giant, and many armed with weapons nearly as large as her, is damn near astonishing.

They run through the city to its outskirts, then into the open space outside it. They run so long she can track the sun’s movement across the sky, and they do not pause for even a moment. The sea had been a distant line of blue from her window, but they don’t stop until they reach its shore. All the others are heaving for breath and beaded with dripping sweat, but as possessed of themselves as ever.

Her breathing is hardly elevated. She’s hardly sweating. She puts a hand to her forehead, then cheeks, and the back of her neck, concerned that she hasn’t passed out from overheating. But her skin feels fine.

Rasaan has kept next to her the whole time, watching her. He does so directly now, his chest heaving, like he’s waiting for something.

She looks over at the soldiers. At the red armor painted over their bodies and faces.

The idea had occurred to her last night, but she hadn’t thought Rasaan would do anything so reckless. Which was stupid of her. With the woman who had been stationed outside her room, the obvious caution with the paint, and now and all the running, she doesn’t know what else it could be.

Brow furrowed, she points to her painted arm and asks, “Vitaar?” She motions between it and the color on the squadron of panting soldiers. Hers doesn't feel hardened into armor, but....

Stomach and shoulders still heaving, Rasaan’s face breaks into a wide grin. He looks excited and proud and--

And she wants to punch him in his beautiful fucking face.

Her anger is apparently obvious, because the soldiers tense and Rasaan holds one hand up to them telling them to wait, and the other up to her asking her to calm down.

She turns her back on him with a growl and plants her hands on her hips. Suddenly she wants to go on another run. Faster and longer.

He starts speaking behind her and she waves him off angrily. She clenches and unclenches her fists. After a minute, she turns and walks to the edge of the water until each wave laps over the tops of her feet. She squats down and dangles her fingers in it, not touching the sand.

When no one is breathing hard anymore, Rasaan walks up behind her. Quietly, he says, ““The tide rises, the tide falls.”” It’s a piece of the Soul Canto, part of the Qun.

She finishes the line just as quietly: ““...But the sea is changeless.””

The next line is, ‘Struggle is an illusion. There is nothing to struggle against.’

Her anger is pointless.

Rasaan then prompts, ““The sky and the sea themselves:””

To which she finishes in a whisper, ““...Nothing special. Only pieces.””

She lets the water lap over her feet and push and pull against her fingers. She feels the sand and how easily it shifts under the water. She looks out to the vast horizon and up at the sky. Then she stands and turns to Rasaan.

“I know you can’t answer me.....” She gives a little huff and a smile, the last of her temper crumbling away. “But you’re goddamned smart, Rasaan. Thank you.” She holds her hand out. He meets it, and they grip one another’s forearms.

She tries to, anyway. Dude’s massive.

 

*     *     *

 

Arishok stands, facing Ariqun and Rasaan. ""So she knows the entirety of the Qun by memory, something only ever accomplished in its history by Ariquns and Rassans. And in addition to her other abnormalities, she is immune to the vitaar.""

Rasaan nods. ""Her spirit is strong. She knows pain and bears it well."" He pauses, glancing away. ""Her heart is good.""

He finishes as normal, ""There is no lie in her, and as for her identity… I cannot say for certain if there is anything missing.""

""Explain.""

Ariqun speaks, his voice deeper even than Arishok’s. ""She has been examined and watched by many. The possibility that she came to us whole should be considered. It is no secret that a storm is gathering over the world, and we will not be immune to it. Perhaps she was meant to be born among us. Perhaps the tide changed, and so instead, she has simply come. She needs no training in the Qun. She is rough in places, but still she knows it. She lives with it carved into her bones.""

""As with combat,"" Arishok says, grim but pensive. ""She clearly has the heart of a warrior. If what you say is true, why come as Bas?""

""We have many questions without answers,"" Ariqun replies, ""and many on matters much more simple than this.""

The decision rests to Arishok, then. He considers.

""Very well,"" he says, ""you may return her to it. But the antaam will be there, as will Arvaraad and myself. She will put down if she is a danger.""

Ariqun nods. ""I will also be there, as will some of the priesthood. Rasaan will go with her and instruct her. She is receptive to him.""

""The area will be cleared in one hour,"" Arishok says. ""If it goes to satisfaction, she will be turned over immediately to Viddasala. When she finishes with her, if time permits, you may retain her for further testing and teaching. I will require the same, though likely much less. We must know her limits and capabilities if she is to be trusted among the Bas. The situation in the South grows worse every day, which is considerable given the situation they have put themselves in. If she is what you believe, she should not be put to unnecessary risk.""

He turns to leave, and when he is gone, Rasaan turns to Ariqun. ""Her sexual drive?""

The older man considers, then asks of his successor, ""What would be your choice?""

""A combination of meditation and work with the Tamassrans.""

Ariqun nods. ""A good approach, and well balanced. I will speak with Arigena to arrange it.

""If she leaves, you will accompany her. I suspect Arishok will go personally, so you will need to see to them both.""

""I will prepare myself.""

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1/24/19: Fairly minor changes and tweaks to reflect plot and world state clarity. All changes and additions are unedited/first draft. Chapter was too long, put the last three scenes into a new one.


	3. Chapter 3

The streets are so full of people, it’s like there’s a parade just out of sight. Except no one gathered is a civilian - they’re all stone-faced soldiers and somber priests. The difference between them and those under the Arigena is subtle, but she began recognizing it as she had stood at her window all day.

Everyone is watching her. Every single person.

The sounds of combat become apparent, and shortly after that, she begins to see arvaraarad - the mage handlers. Like Templars, but much less tolerant or forgiving. None of them have mages with them.

The air becomes almost metallic and then she hears it, the electric shifting and crackling she heard once before: when she woke naked and bloodied on the street. Her feet stall.

Rasaan puts a hand on her arm. A few generous paces behind them, the Arishok follows, silent and watchful.

“It hurts,” she says.

Rasaan conveys something like, ‘You must bear it.’

She shakes her head. “Not me. The… thing.” She points to where she knows the green scar will be. “It shouldn’t be here. It hurts. There’s pain everywhere around it.”

He’s watching her closely, but just nods and urges her forward.

She doesn’t want to go near it. Each step is more difficult, like there’s something in the air that pushes her back, holds her away with more force the closer she gets. The feeling of primal terror from the face of the many-eyed black wolf begins to slowly bloom in her chest.

They round a corner, the two of them and their shadow, lines of antaam around them, weapons all drawn.

She sees the soldiers fighting before she sees the scar. They’re fighting demons, and as she nears, she sees one of them come out of the green wound in the air. It’s bigger than she remembers.

The demon is frantic, panicked and furious. She doesn’t know how she knows this, but she can see it, the same as she sees a smile or a frown on another person’s face. It’s all hunger that’s sharp and snarling and stinging around the edges, tall and too thin, its limbs too long, its flesh grayed and falling off as if rotted. It lunges for the first thing it sees.

To the side, a Qunari is being hauled away, alive, but too wounded to move. She smells blood everywhere, much of it old.

Have they been fighting these things since she got here?

Urgency overtakes her.

She turns to Rasaan and orders, “Have the Arvaraad use any magic suppressing abilities they have on it,” she tips her chin toward the scar.

He glances behind them and the order goes out. The men surround the scar without fear. They have their role, and just as they will do it to the exclusion of all else, so too will the soldiers fulfill theirs and protect them.

She doesn’t know what comes next, not until the last of the remaining demons is cut down.

Her right arm swings up and a beam lances out simultaneously from her palm and from the scar, connecting them in a crackling light, liquid and electric at the same time. Sten gives an order that she doesn’t really hear, and yet she knows she’s moments from death, everyone around her ready to strike at a single word.

She bares her teeth. The connection grows, and the scar contracts. Then something appears inside it, a shifting thing, crystalline and stone, stabbing outward in every direction and reshaping itself constantly. It’s all the pain of the demons and the light and her hand, and she realizes she is fighting sounds of agony in her throat, that she is shaking as if in a terrible cold.

There is so much yelling.

A sudden pressure pierces her shoulder, followed by a feeling of sharp tearing. She doesn't look down, she can't.

The light in her hand connects to the spiked shape. That connection becomes rigid and hard, and when it does she yanks her arm back.

The stone shatters and vanishes.

The tear winks out and seals itself. The air where it had been is tremulous, soft like scar tissue that’s only just formed, but the wound itself is gone.

She drops to her hands and knees, panting. Tremors run through her in waves.

All around her, it is silent, save the steady drip of blood from the spear wound over her heart.

 

*     *     *

 

**One Month Later**

 

A runner lets herself in through the open flap of the Commander’s tent. He is standing, bent over some paper on his desk, looking at it with thoughtful concentration.

“Yes?” He asks.

“Missive for you, ser.”

“From?”

“Someone named The Iron Bull.”

 

*     *     *

 

**Two More Months Later**

 

The letters are dealt with every morning while Josephine has her tea in the converted storage room among sacks of grain. Not long ago, she had allowed herself to entertain the thought that she would prefer coffee, but she has found her present circumstances ample cause to adjust her priorities. Besides, the flavor doesn't catch her off guard once she is absorbed in her work any longer. Usually. And at least now she has cream and sugar.

The cup rattles on its saucer, and the small desk with it. When she hears the shockwave in the distance a moment later, she spares a worry for the others.

She and those billeted in Tinunstead are fine for the time being - the Breach has only just reached two miles in diameter, and the little village is nearly ten miles from its nearest edge. The forward camp where Cullen and Cassandra remain with the bulk of the Inquisition's forces is another matter.

Cullen and Solas have assured them they should not have to relocate again for at least a month, but as the surprisingly diplomatic elven man cautions, the nature of the Breach is unpredictable at best. They have learned to listen to him in such matters. The speed with which the Inquisition is growing is complicating the logistics, as well. They have grown so quickly that they simply cannot afford another temporary move. The people of Tinunstead have been accommodating, but it is not Haven - it was not designed with visitors and pilgrims in mind. Every building is occupied, every space already in use. She and the other heads of the Inquisition have been debating the cost - in every sense - of relocating the villagers, or moving the Inquisition base impractically far from the problem they are trying to address.

Ultimately the decision will likely fall to Lord Malcolm, and he can at times be... mercurial.

She has enough to keep her busy, in any event, and before long is gone to the business of politicking and alliances. She almost misses the threats which came in the beginning, promising the whole of the Inquisition would “burn in the Maker’s most righteous and holy fire.” They were unsettlingly close to the truth some days, if the Maker’s fire is green and accompanied by falling pieces of the raw Fade.

Ironically, such letters went directly into _her_ fire. It was so very therapeutic.

She sets aside yet another letter from the Prince of Starkhaven with a little sigh, and when she looks down at the next, she pauses. It bears the seal of the Qunari. She wrote to them along with all the others, in the beginning, but did not expect a reply of any sort. Qunari keep to themselves notoriously, and they would be slow to act, even on a danger so terrible as the Breach.

She slides the blade of her paperknife under the wax seal and unfolds the parchment. As her eyes scan the contents, they begin to widen, larger and larger. She stands.

“Camilla!” she calls.

The woman’s footsteps hurry over the ground and she lets herself in. “My lady?”

“Send a runner to the forward camp and get me a horse. I need to see the others immediately.”

The young woman bobs quickly and runs, spurred by the naked urgency in Josephine’s voice and on her normally composed face.

 

*     *     *

 

“I don’t trust it,” Cullen says. “It’s more likely a trick to capitalize on our vulnerability than anything.” He, along with the other advisors, Cassandra, Hawke and Fenris, Solas, Varric, and - at Hawke's request - The Iron Bull are arrayed in the command pavilion of the forward camp.

“Or they realize exactly how dangerous the Breach is becoming,” Josephine says.

"Is it possible the Rifts are spreading that far north?" Cassandra asks Solas, openly concerned.

"Possible," he replies, "but unlikely."

"Perhaps they realize that at the rate it is growing," Josephine says, "it will not contain itself to our borders. Their letter makes it sound as if they wish nothing in return. Were it anyone but the Qunari, I would have no doubt it was simply a bargaining tactic, but they are difficult to predict at the best of times. Ambassadors in Antiva train exclusively for over a year just to be ready for the chance that they may be willing to meet.” She gives a little shake of her head. 

"They have no tolerance for magical dangers,” Fenris rumbles from the back of the group, where he stands with his arms crossed, leaning his back into a support post, one leg bent to rest a foot on the smooth wood. "But this is... unusual. As a rule they do not interfere in foreign affairs. If we fall, it would be our own fault, as they see it. And a long time coming."

"They don't do anything without a reason," Hawke adds, his tone thoughtful as he scans the letter again with a frown. "The trick is figuring out what that is. The Arishok and I were on good enough terms for years, and I still found him inscrutable most days. They aren't like us, they operate by a completely different set of rules."

“Is there a reason it cannot be both?” Leliana asks slyly. “The Qunari are reticent, yes, but as you say they are not fools. They have spies everywhere. If they have a solution, why should they not offer it? It would solve the problem of the Breach while allowing them unheard of access to roam the south.”

“The better question is why they waited so long,” Cullen says grimly.

“We can only guess,” Leliana answers. “They may have wanted their offer to seem more attractive, or are drawn by the ties we have formed and the opportunity that presents them, at least in theory. Perhaps this solution is only recently discovered. More likely is that they simply waited to see if the threat would contain itself, or how we would respond to it.”

“Or there’s the fact that if they did nothing more than sit back and watch,” Cullen says, “it would wipe out their opposition and do the work of conquering for them.”

"Which would mean that if they're stepping up now," Varric muses, "something has changed. They see an opportunity or a threat, and whatever it is it's enough for them to step in _officially,_  for the first time ever."

Everyone looks to Hawke. He, however, looks to The Iron Bull and holds up the letter. "What's your take on this, Hissrad?"

"I haven't heard shit about it," he says bluntly, obviously not pleased by the lack of information. "There have been weird rumors out of Par Vollen since they ordered me here, but heading into the South? That's not something they  _do_ , like your friend said." Hidden from most sets of eyes, Fenris's jaw ticks a little at the word _friend._ "But I can tell you this much," The Iron Bull goes on. "If they say they have a way to fix this thing and they're ready to bring it south," he points vaguely in the direction of the Breach, "then that's exactly what they have. We've been holding things together well enough, but we all know this is getting worse, not better. Yeah, maybe the offer makes you nervous, but what's the bigger concern: what they get out of this, or the fact that if you turn them down, the world _literally ends?"_

After a moment of silence, Hawke says brightly, "A portal to the Fade in the sky that's trying to swallow the world, more demons roaming around than there are cows, red lyrium popping up like elfroot and being taken by mages and templars, missing Wardens, a sinister puppetmaster lurking in the shadows behind it all.... Sure. Why not. Let's throw in some Qunari. We can have a party. Maybe they'll wear little hats."

Cassandra makes an exasperated noise and rolls her eyes. Fenris smirks despite himself. Everyone else just looks troubled.

"Well?" Hawke prompts. "Let's get moving. The south isn't going to hand _itself_ over on a silver platter."

“I have Herveaux in the rookery tent outside Tinunstead,” Leliana says. “He is well-rested, and fast and reliable. Barring any interference, the message will arrive within a day and a half.”

“Assuming they leave as soon as they get it, and assuming they take one of their fastest ships, the earliest they could arrive is,” Cullen pauses to think. His expression turns grim. “Maker. Three months.”

Cassandra’s face goes stony. “We have held out this long. We will find a way to continue doing so. Solas is still working on possible solutions to at least slow the growth of the Breach, and he believes he has the location of another artifact. The method he has taught the mages to prevent demons from spawning is so far working as well as the templar's abilities. We have them at the ready if we are left with no choice. In the meantime....” She trails off.

Josephine gives a nod and looks to their Spymaster. “I will draft it on the way back to Tinunstead and have it ready when you arrive, Leliana.” Then she is gone, already scribbling on her board.

“...I am going to go pray,” Cassandra says with a tight sigh.

"I've always found that helps  _tremendously,"_ Hawke says with open sarcasm, bordering on outright derision.

As the others leave, Cullen says, too quietly for anyone to overhear, “Maker save us.” His mind is four years in the past, watching buildings burn and running over the bodies of his Templars and the city’s watch.

 

*     *     *

 

One week later, the Inquisition receives a runner in the form of a massive Qunari with skin so dark it is nearly black. He sits atop a horse nearly twice as large as any normal animal and whose head and neck are entirely covered in angular, oversized armor. There are no eyeholes to be seen.

The man asks to speak directly to “The leadership of the Inquisition.”

His message to them is brief: The Qunari vanguard will arrive within the hour, bringing with them supplies and aid for the Inquisition. It is lead by the Arishok, who is accompanied by two people named Rasaan and Ashkaari.

When The Iron Bull is asked who the other two are, he just shakes his head, his face stony, and says, “Big fucking news.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name of the village where the Inquisition is based came from [this jaw-dropping map](https://www.deviantart.com/rubecso/art/Ferelden-Map-Simple-722043493) of Ferelden.
> 
> More information on how it was made can be found with the [black and white version.](https://www.deviantart.com/rubecso/art/Ferelden-Map-Detailed-722041354)
> 
> The creator does map commissions, if anyone is in the market and would like to check him/her out. Because... srsly just throw money at this guy/lady, I can't even.
> 
> \- - - -
> 
> 1/24/19: Changes made to reflect clarity on plot, world state, and the addition of characters. Some Inquisition things taken out to lessen front-loading. ...Which I then just replaced with different front-loading instead *sighs*. All changes are unedited/first draft.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a reference in this chapter to a Dragon Age comic. I did absolutely no research into it, so it is pretty much pulled straight from my backside.
> 
> -
> 
> New vocab:
> 
>  **Basalit-an:** A non-Qunari worthy of respect  
>  **Taarsidath-an halsaam:** "I will bring myself sexual pleasure later while thinking about this with great respect."
> 
> \- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

All the players are arrayed in the Command tent: The Iron Bull is at the back, big arms crossed and facing everyone else; the tacit Inquisitor is on the other side of the war table, standing with the Commander, the Spymaster, the Ambassador, the Seeker, and Solas. Sera is sitting near Hawke, her back up against a support post, playing with the wrong end of a knife. Broody - the name is too perfect, The Iron Bull can't help but use it - is off to Hawke's other side, and Ma'am has herself seated, making a little wooden chair look like a throne. The demon doesn't _seem_ like he's here, but he's probably just floating around somewhere being creepy and invisible. The only one really missing is Blackwall, and that's because he's on his way back from the Hinterlands. The Inquisition finally had to give up ground in the region, and pulled back to defend what they have, which means he doesn't need to be there leading charges or giving inspiring speeches or whatever crap it was he got up to. Too much work for the Inquisition, trying to stop the civil war there _and_ keep a handle on the Breach's mess.

“The Qunari are lead by a triumvirate," The Iron Bull explains. "Everyone knows about the Arishok, but that’s only because his branch of the Qun, the antaam, what you’d call our military, are the only ones who set foot outside Qunari lands. You see Qunari or hear stories about them, it’s the antaam. That’s why you don’t see a lot of Qunari women. Our soldiers are all men.”

Cassandra quietly rolls her eyes.

Bull goes on, “One of the other branches is the priesthood. They’re our healers, teachers, scientists, and scholars, stuff like that. The Ariqun leads them like the Arishok leads the military. Every Qunari is taught parts of Qun, what they need to know in order to fill their role and live their life. The actual Qun is massive, I don’t know… millions of words, maybe. Some of the priesthood spend their entire lives studying it and only crack the surface. The successor of the Ariqun is called Rasaan.”

“So he’s essentially the Qunari equivalent of a prince,” Cullen says.

Bull hums, considering. “More or less, sure. We don’t do royalty or lines of succession or anything like that, though. It’s just whoever’s best for the job.”

“And this Ashkaari?” Hawke asks.

“That’s the really weird one,” Bull says with a quirk of his head. It’s a small gesture, made loud by the size and breadth of his horns. “Translated, Ashkaari means ‘one who seeks’ or ‘one who thinks.’ They’re our scientists and philosophers. People who don’t leave our shores. But there’s one other meaning to the word, and this is the interesting one, because I think I’ve heard about this chick. 'Ashkaari' can also be a word for a Qunari who has found enlightenment.

“So if this is who I think it is....” He shakes his head. “Those weird rumors I mentioned hearing out of Par Vollen? They all center around a woman who fell out of a Rift there, right around the time the Breach opened here. As far as I know, it’s the only Rift they’ve seen.”

"And they're alright with you telling us all of this?" Hawke asks, dubious.

Bull shrugs. "I have the latitude to do my job however I think best. Seems pretty obvious what they're bringing, which means preparing you at least a little is a good thing. See, my people assumed this chick was a demon, or at the very least possessed, because she wasn’t alone when she showed up. There was some glowing thing just hanging out inside the Rift until she was found. Looked like a woman, apparently. Who the hell knows with that weird Fade crap.” He sees the Spymaster resist the urge to glance at the Seeker. “She was in bad shape, anyway. No memory, disoriented, pretty rough around the edges, but....” He makes a sound, somewhere between discomfort and doubt. “I told you the Qun is massive. Like ridiculously, impossibly massive. It’s a comprehensive life philosophy and details on how to run an entire society, plus a few thousand pages of a bunch of other shit, I don’t even know what. This woman had the whole thing memorized. Didn’t know her name, didn’t know more than a few words of our language, but knew the whole fucking Qun. Tamassrans must have shit themselves. But that might not even be the weirdest part.”

“Of course not,” the Seeker says drily.

He shakes his head. “Look, I don’t know if I even believe half of it. Qunari don’t really do rumors, so when I hear about something out of Par Vollen through my channels, I’m usually pretty confident in it. But this shit is crazy. To be honest, I think it’d be a good idea to just wait and see for ourselves either way. They're going to be here any minute as it is.

"But I saved the best part for last. That Rift that opened up in Par Vollen? She closed it.”

The only sound for a long time is the impact of slag in the distance. It’s the hush of tenuous, scared hope.

“...So you believe this is real,” Leliana says.

“I can’t see any other reason they’d come all this way, especially not like this. To get here as fast as they did? I don't even want to think about the kind of resources they must have burned. The Arishok wouldn’t made a decision like that lightly.

“I know you’re all worried that this is some kind of ploy or something, but no offense, the Inquisition wouldn’t much interest to them right now, connections or no. Even if it had value as a target, this wouldn’t be how they hit. If they were looking to capitalize on the chaos down here… well, you all know there would be better ways to do it. This would be sloppy, and the antaam doesn’t do sloppy. The Rasaan doesn’t come out for invasions, either. An Ashkaari sure as shit wouldn’t. ...But to be fair, they don’t really come out at all. Ever. We have stories of them traveling abroad, but I always figured those were just parables.”

“We were a target of no value, and yet you sought us out on their orders,” Solas says.

The Iron Bull nods. “And now we have a pretty good idea why.”

“So,” Cullen says, “we essentially have two members of the Qunari royal family and, what, a Qunari... prophet? Spiritual leader? All coming our way with a small army of the most disciplined, deadly, and efficient soldiers in the world.”

“The bulk of those will probably hang back and wait for orders,” Bull says. “Maybe on the ships. If the point was to invade or threaten, they wouldn’t have bothered with a runner.”

“Yes, well ‘hanging back’ isn’t exactly the same as not being here at all. They’ll be within a few day’s ride at most. I’ve heard how fast they can travel when they want to.”

“Commander?” the Seeker prompts.

Rutherford rubs at his temples with one hand.

“Regardless of our concerns,” he says, “it’s as The Iron Bull has said. They're already on their way, and no amount of scrambling preparation would stop them from mowing us down if that was what they wanted to do. I'm loathe to say it, but from what little I know, one of their soldiers is worth ten of ours."

"Twenty," Hawke interrupts, his voice serious. "At least." His eyes go distant, and Cullen knows what he's seeing. What he's remembering.

“That considered,” Cullen says with both reluctance and certainty, “I have to agree that picking the Inquisition as a target right now would be pointless. For all our support and alliances, we have no real influence, and I can't see the Qunari taking that route if this is a preamble for some kind of assault, anyway. They don't _warn_ you they're coming. I suggest we tell our soldiers exactly what they've asserted: that they're coming to help. There's enough mistrust of the Qunari people as a whole that our forces will be wary and watchful no matter what we say, and this way, at least the expectation will be laid out that they're to be treated with civility.”

"Do tell them that if I hear the word 'oxman' once," Hawke drawls, "Buttercup gets first choice of what appendage to gnaw on. Appendage, not limb. I find it's the small details that really get a good threat across."

Varric snorts, openly amused. "I'll never get over that name. Ever."

"Buttercup?" Vivienne asks, entertained, but clearly waiting to see in what way.

"It's his dog, yeah?" Sera says, watching the knife sway as she balances its point on a fingertip. "The big slobbery one _you_ hate. Hawke's sister named him when she was little."

"How do you know that?" Fenris asks, openly curious.

She shrugs. "I listen to things. People. Interesting people. Hawke's interesting." 

"It was the fight," Cole's voice murmurs from a corner, mournful. "So soon after he died, I could _kill_ him. No, not that one, anything but that one, so she said Glitterbug instead, and that was worse, but then fresh tears made constellations on her lashes, and I couldn't say no, not to her, always so kind...."

"Ugh, it's back," Sera cries in exasperated disgust, "someone make it go away!"

"Cole may come and go as he pleases," Solas says, arch and final.

Sera mutters something clearly unflattering under her breath, but rather than argue, just hunkers down, glowering, and holds her knife properly. Fenris is watching Hawke, he's always watching Hawke, and that's why he's the only one to see the shadow and pain flicker over his face, there and gone in an instant.

Cassandra cuts in, sharp and annoyed, “Hawke, Josephine, and myself will meet them. Iron Bull, I would like you nearby. The rest of you, be ready, but stay back. We do not need them to feel threatened." Yet.

"Yeah,  _that's_ the worry," Varric mutters.

The group breaks up, and as The Iron Bull passes the war table, Solas finally spits out whatever he’s been waiting to say. “At times, Iron Bull, you almost speak as if you are not one of the Qunari yourself.”

“People can be more than one thing at once, Solas,” he says lightly. “You should know that.”

“And that is precisely my concern.” He does a fine job of saying two things at once: ‘You’re not a person,’ and ‘I still think you’re a double-agent.’

He is. He literally is, he’s made no secret of it. What he doesn’t get is what the mage thinks he knows that their Spymaster doesn’t. She’d put some of the Ben-Hassrath to shame.

Bull laughs to himself. “Good thing Qunari are all mindless drones, or that might really hur--”

He’s cut off by the thunder of hoofbeats and a woman’s bellowing cries of, _“Out of the way!”_

 

*     *     *

 

The camp is a frenzy; the woman rides straight through it at a full run, taking the shortest path toward the Breach, white hair being whipped about, expression fixed. Cullen is shouting for everyone to stand down. He barks orders at a small cluster of officers, who then break at a run to spread them.

"Woof," Sera says as she stares after the woman, her mouth hanging open.

Two more riders approach at an easy trot, both men, both looking after the woman. The first could be a large human, and is patently unamused. He says something that sounds bleak to the other man, a younger Qunari with blue eyes and double horns who bears a look closer to wry amusement, or perhaps fond exasperation. He replies to the other man in an easy tone.

Cullen is yelling at his soldiers to go after the woman, but the blue-eyed Qunari interrupts him.

“That won’t be necessary, Commander,” he assures.

“Excuse me?” Cullen demands, incredulous.

“You are Cullen Rutherford, Commander of the Inquisition? Ashkaari tells us you are Basalit-an. You and the Seeker.”

“We’re--” He shakes his head, clearing his bewilderment, and jabs an arm after the woman. “There are demons down there, she’s going to get herself killed!”

“She told us about them,” he says conversationally. “No reason to worry. Or....” his brows go together and he glances at the other man before looking back to the Commander. His horse is panting heavily, but staying at perfect, still attention. “Not more than a couple hundred, you don’t think?”

The others _were_  mounting up quickly, but they all stop and stare.

“A couple....” Cullen is dumbfounded, and suddenly wonders if he might be having some bizarre sort of dream. He glances down, but his trousers are still on.

The blue-eyed man waves a hand dismissively and smiles as if he’s just realized he said something ridiculous. The other one looks like he wants to flog the woman as soon as he gets his hands on her.

“She’ll be fine,” the younger Qunari says. His accent is perfect. “I’m Rassan, by the way,” he greets with apparent warmth. “This is the Arishok.” He nods behind Cullen and greets, “The Iron Bull."

“Now I don’t know about you,” he goes on to the Commander, leaning forward “but I would dearly love to see what’s about to happen.” He holds a hand down. “Shall we?” He smiles, a sincere expression that reaches his eyes.

Cullen pauses only a moment before his face turns grim; he clasps the other man’s forearm and is pulled up into the saddle. The beast they’re on is monstrous, so much so that he worries he may not be able to maintain a proper grip.

The others are heading toward the remains of the Temple of Sacred Ashes after the woman, this Ashkaari, it seems safe to assume. Sera is pulled up behind Hawke as he rides by at a fast clip, Bull joins the Arishok on his horse, and they take off at a hard gallop.

 

*     *     *

 

Arrows litter the ground, and as they gain on her, just enough fading ichor remains of several demons underneath for it to be clear what she was firing at. She’s an abysmal shot, by the looks of it. ...Or an honestly, legitimately, terrifyingly good one. Their people haven't been able to venture into the temple proper for nearly a month, it has been too overrun.

They round a corner and see her standing with a bow in one hand, an empty pouch of arrows strapped to her belt and another nearly as depleted on her back, staring up at the vision of the Divine’s death as it plays out yet again. It stops before they can quite catch up, and she tucks her bow over herself as she steps nimbly from the edge.

The others call after her in warning, but too late - it is easily a thirty-foot drop. And yet the Arishok and Rasaan seem unconcerned, even as the others rush to look after her.

She is walking steadily, determinedly toward the Rift, her eyes on it, no fear in her posture. She carries nothing but what appears to be a carved, pale wooden staff, unadorned by blade or cudgel. But if that is her only weapon... she cannot be a mage, the Qunari do not let them roam freely.

The inner circle of the Inquisition all scrabble down after Ashkaari. The Qunari, however, sit comfortably on their horses, apparently content to watch as if this were merely some sort of spectacle.

With a flick of her wrist, the woman's entire hand and several inches of her arm flare to life with green magic, and the massive Rift above the ground seems to pulse in answer. When she reaches its base, she calls out, “Be ready. We’re about to have very large, very angry company.” Her accent, too, is flawless.

She raises her arm, gives a flick and a tug, and the massive crystalline form hovering in the air shatters in a flash of blinding jade light. When it fades but a moment later, the Rift has re-ignited, twisting in the air like a sheet of spider silk made of pure light, and two demons, each the size of several houses stacked atop one another, uncurl from where they crouch upon the ground: a greater Pride demon, its eyes bleak pits that glitter with malign intelligence, its flesh covered with scales like slabs of stone, so rough they will cut if you get too close, such arrogance flowing from it that it makes everything else seem small. The second demon, none have ever seen. It is a writhing thing, an emaciated body nearly hidden by broad, muscled limbs, all of it crawling as if made up of vermin or insects just under a paper-thin surface. Its eyes are hollow pits that seem to suck the warmth from the very air only to have it billow out from its body in stifling, heavy, almost choking gusts. It hisses quietly, constantly, and the sound makes everyone feel as if blades are scraping against their bones.

The others draw their weapons and take aim, but Varric is the only one who manages to loose anything before the woman has jumped. She leaps straight into the air, high enough to come level with the Pride demon’s face, pulls both arms over her head, and smashes her staff deep into its eye socket. Its bellow sets the smaller pieces of debris on the ground to rattling. It rears back, but she has her hands on her staff, uses its end to swing upward, grip one of the creature’s horns, swing about, and slam the heel of her foot into the end of the staff, driving it the rest of the way in.

The Pride demon falls, shaking the earth beneath their feet. She is retrieving her staff and whirling about before the demon has even begun to disintegrate properly. Pieces of it fly from the wood as she spins it once through the air and tucks it to herself.

The others are hacking at the second demon, trying to protect themselves from bellows so strong they knock even The Iron Bull back. Where they strike, its skin repairs itself, and the more they hurt it, the stronger and hotter and faster it seems to get.

Ashkaari swings her arm again toward the Rift and a sparking beam connects it to her limb with what is obviously staggering force.

The massive demon goes limp.

“Now!” she cries. “Hit it with everything you have!”

As a flurry of attacks are unleashed, the demon trying and failing to right itself like a man heavily sedated, she brings her arm around and down and a whipcrack sounds, wide and deep as the strike of thunder. The demon is jerked back as if a rope is tied around its chest, there is a flash of violent green light, and it is pulled to its knees, its head going back, hands clawing at its neck.

Up on the ledge, comfortably watching everything below, Rasaan remarks brightly, “That’s new.”

The Arishok scowls. Or smiles. It’s really impossible to tell.

Solas freezes the demon’s neck solid, and The Iron Bull swings a hammer whose head is larger than Varric, shattering it. The creature’s head topples to the ground, its eye sockets impossibly larger. Its jaw works weakly once, twice, before going still and beginning to melt into the earth.

The woman yells, “Solas, barriers around everyone on the ground! Bull, I’m about to go flying, so get ready to catch!”

There’s a split second while he processes the information, but her arm is already swinging toward the Rift. He bites out a curse and takes off at a sprint toward her, Hawke mirroring him from the other direction. Another beam connects her hand to the Rift, there’s some sort of pale stone, vaguely round and almost smooth that appears, then shatters like a cracked egg, and Bull gets to her just in time to catch her as she flies backwards. She hits him like a charging druffalo, right in the chest, and knocks him down. Everyone has been knocked down, actually.

Because the Rift is closed. It just did not go quietly.

The massive column of light that connected it to the Breach is dissipating like fog under the morning sun.

For the first time in over three months, the Breach is still. It does not moan. It does not grow or shift. Nothing falls from it to the earth below.

The silence is so absolute, everyone’s ears are ringing. It has not been this quiet since before the Conclave was destroyed.

The woman twists to get her hands under her and pushes herself up from where she lays atop The Iron Bull. This close, he can see she's sweating and drawn.

She grins at him, breath coming fast. “Taarsidath-an halsaam?” her voice is weak and cracking now that she's not giving out commands.

He blinks up at her. “Uh....”

And then suddenly she doesn’t look so good.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh, nope, that's... there it is.” And then her eyes roll back and she falls atop Bull, limp and unconscious.

Rasaan and the Arishok have picked their way down, and the younger man walks up to Bull and leans over him, standing comfortably next to Hawke. “...Huh,” he says.

"Was that supposed to happen?" Hawke asks. "The whole...." He gestures vaguely to her unconscious form. "I mean that part," he points over his shoulder at where the Rift was moments ago, "was _great,_ obviously, but...."

The others have dusted themselves off and are making their way over, gathering around the trio.

Rasaan shakes his head and bends to pick her up, lifting her easily into his arms. “She’s fine,” he says. “She said this might happen, but it means she might be out for a few days. If you have somewhere safe she can rest, preferably quiet, we can start answering the questions you no doubt have.”

“My tent is available,” Solas offers. “If you will follow me.” He turns and walks away without waiting for a reply.

Rasaan glances at the Arishok, who nods fractionally, then follows Solas, picking his way over the rubble with surprising grace.

Everyone is staring dumbly after them.

“...So,” Varric says at length. “That was fun.”

“You have a strange idea of fun, Varric Tethras,” the Arishok says. “Much like the only other dwarf I have known." He frowns. "...I hope you bathe more often than he did. And drink less.” He turns and follows Rasaan and Solas.

“Do you know him, Varric?” Cassandra asks, surprised.

“Ehhh we sort of met a while back when some friends and I inadvertently invaded the Qunari capitol.”

She turns to Hawke. “...Did you,” she says flatly.

"I do have other friends, Seeker," Varric defends, but Cassandra is still glowering, as she does any time evidence presents itself that Varric had always known how to reach Hawke.

"Don't look at me," Hawke says, raising his hands in apparent innocence. "I was ass deep in slavers while he was sunning himself in Par Vollen."

“It's a long story," Varric sighs. "Buy me a round and I’ll be happy to share it. I know how you love to hear me talk.”

The Seeker makes a disgusted sound and leaves with a shake of her head.

Everyone else is still more or less staring dumbly.

Hawke leans in toward Bull. “I take it that was the part we were meant to see for ourselves?”

The other man laughs darkly. “Are you fucking kidding me? They _under_ sold her.”

"...Delightful. This should be so much  _fun!"_   He claps his hands together and walks away.

"I told you to stay away, Hawke!" Varric calls wryly after him.

"I heard that, Varric!" Cassandra bellows from somewhere in the rubble of the floor above. In the same moment, Hawke flips him the bird.

"Of course you did," the dwarf mutters. He gives the sigh of a martyr and moves to follow Hawke, massaging his temples with the fingers of one hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't mention Dorian in the big tent meeting because in this world, Dorian hasn't yet found his way to the group. ~~_Probably_ yet. I love him and obviously we all want him there, but I promise nothing.~~ Nope nevermind, he's in the tags he has to be here or _I would be a liar._
> 
> This is generally going to get waaaaaay less editing than it should. Because... junk food writing. I don't think I warned you about that. >_> But sometimes I back-edit a lot, if that's worth much.
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> 9/14/18: Reference to the similarities between Ash and the woman at the vision in the temple removed for later use. Too "tell, don't show."  
> 1/24/19: Changed to reflect new characters/plot clarity/world state etc. First draft quality, as usual.  
> 2/5/19: Same reason as above, the "Mark" is now considerably larger and I added the bit where Bull notes that she doesn't look so hot


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I assume Solas is already fluent in Qunlat. Because stupid genius fadewalker man.
> 
> New Vocab:
> 
>  **Beresaad:** Troops who leave Qunland| The vanguard of the antaam, sent abroad to interact with the outside world. Soldiers first and foremost, but also function as diplomats, surveyors, foreign trade administrators, and investigate foreign lands and cultures on the Arishok's behalf.  
>  **Karasten:** Infantry commander; corporal.  
>  **Taam-kasari:** Beresaad shock trooper| "The one with the battleaxe."  
>  **Vasaad:** A title/rank of Qunari. I’m pretending it’s Captain or something similar.  
>  **Viddasaad:** Made it up; member of the beresaad specializing in field medicine.
> 
> \- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Rassan approves of Solas’s tent. It is large enough, and Ashkaari will fit on the cot, if just barely. Everything is what the Bas would call “sparse,” but Rasaan simply calls tidy. He never fails to be amused by the obsession Southerners have with the illusion of individuality. He understands their fascination with accumulating belongings, he simply does not share it. Nor does he miss the possible implications of the fact that Solas does not share it, either. It makes him an anomaly. Rasaan has a fondness for such things.

The elf saarebas’s request to study the magic in Ashkaari’s hand is granted, solely because she requested it be, but it is made clear that he may do so only in Rasaan’s presence.

Karasten, Vasaad, and Taam-Kasari arrange themselves around the tent, two on each side, as Rasaan gives his Kadan what he knows to be a largely unnecessary once over to check for any injuries. He calls one of the Viddasaad in to sit with her before he leaves, as well. She warned that her unconsciousness may appear dangerous at times.

The rest of the small force that accompanied the Arishok, Ashkaari, and himself, are finishing unloading supplies where directed by the Inquisition Captains as Solas leads him to the Command tent. He does not miss the way the other man glances at his quarters one last time as they leave. There is a pain to him, perhaps even a longing, though it is well masked.

 

*     *     *

 

As the leadership from both sides filter into the Command Pavillion - along with the Iron Bull, again at Hawke’s request - Arishok stands outside, openly watching the Inquisition soldiers.

As The Iron Bull approaches, Arishok says, ““I am greeting you. Who here speaks our language?””

Bull pauses and smiles, playing along. ““Just the white-haired elf, as far as I can tell.””

Arishok nods and dismisses him with, ““Your orders are unchanged.””

 

*     *     *

 

Bull starts things off: when everyone is gathered. “Would it be a shorter conversation if I just asked what I’ve heard about her out of Par Vollen _isn’t_ true?”

“Likely,” Rasaan says with a little smile that makes his eyes glint as if he’s remembering a joke.

Cassandra reconsiders some of what Iron Bull had to say earlier, because she has never heard of any Qunari having... well, a personality. The contrast between Rasaan, and the Arishok and his soldiers, is a stark one.

“So the paint....” Bull leads.

Rasaan nods, his mirth falling away. “Vitaar.”

Bull looks somber and troubled.

“Vitaar?” Josephine asks.

“The red stuff you see painted on the bodies of the soldiers,” Bull explains.

“It's a form of armor," Hawke says. He looks from Rasaan to Josie. "It goes on like paint and adheres to the skin, dries as flexible as cloth but harder than steel. Never was sure why they didn't just cover themselves in it head to toe."

Rasaan merely smiles, declining to fill in the gaps.

His personable demeanor puts Hawke on edge. Hissrad he can understand - the man has been in the South for years, and is at least in part enjoying playing the bawdy mercenary leader. But Rasaan is every inch the Qunari.

“A kind of blood magic, interestingly,” Solas says of the vitaar. "Not unlike the phylacteries used by the Chantry." His tone could be called scholarly, but Varric and Cassandra have spent enough time with him to recognize scathing judgement under the lightness.

The Arishok’s eyes go to him, though they are inscrutable.

A Qunari soldier enters at that moment, large, fat rolls of parchment stacked on his trunk-like arms.

“Ah,” Rasaan says, and indicates they should be set on the desk at the side of the room. “Thank you.”

Once unburdened, the soldier departs without a word or glance to anyone.

“A gift,” Rasaan explains. “Maps that may prove pertinent to your cause. Ashkaari worked at them as we traveled. I can explain them once we’re done, they’re quite detailed.”

“That’s great,” Bull says, a little impatience showing through a flattened tone. “Really. But getting back to the poison all over her skin?”

“Poison?” Cassandra asks, alarmed.

“Yeah. That’s the thing about vitaar. It’s good stuff, but it’s _supposed_ to be violently poisonous to every race in Thedas except Qunari.”

“She isn’t Qunari?” Surprise this time.

“In creed, yes,” Rassan explains, “but not in race. The word has two meanings.” He gestures to the Arishok. “Obviously some of the Qunari people more closely resemble humans, but Ashkaari is very much not of the Qunari race. In honesty, we don’t know what she is. We assumed elven because of the ears, but that is where any resemblance stops.”

He doesn’t have to explain further. Her height and proportions, the generosity of her figure, her high-boned, elegantly strong face, none of it speaks of elven heritage. She would dwarf even a full-blooded human. A large one.

“We are told she appeared in your capital a matter of months ago,” Leliana prompts.

“Not even three and a half, in fact,” Rasaan confirms, “but close. And she came to us as you saw her. Her abilities, her skill in combat and with the Anchor. She learned none of it from us.”

""Except how to behave with any amount of civility,"" Arishok says.

Rasaan smiles fondly. “She was well-mannered enough before.”

The look the Arishok gives him might peel the skin from a lesser creature.

Solas, who stands behind some of the others, looks grim. It is a flash of expression, subtle, come and gone as the beat of a bug’s wing, then twisted expertly to appear as something else. Rasaan only notices because he has taken a special interest in the man. He has the most curious reactions to the most curious things.

 _”She_ is responsible for the Breach?” Cassandra demands.

“Not at all,” Rasaan assures. “The Anchor - the means that allows her to close the Rifts - was never meant to be hers. It was stolen from the perpetrator, but not by her. She will explain when she wakes.”

“You expect us to believe that this woman, who you claim holds the _key_ to the destruction of the veil, our religious order, and our best chance at peace, is not responsible.” Cullen’s tone is civil by a knife’s edge. “Not only that, but you claim to know who _is_ responsible, and we’re to simply wait for the information?”

Rasaan’s face doesn’t lose its calm, but something behind his eyes turns sharp, commanding, and positively concerning. “All we expect you to believe for the time being, Commander, is that we came here of our own volition. We could have approached any nation in Thedas for access to your lands and dealt with the Rifts and the Breach on our own, leaving you to the devices of the one behind it. Ashkaari will prove herself to you when she wakes, as she proved herself to us. It was no small feat, I assure you.”

There is a tense pause. Leliana breaks it; “This Anchor. That was the magic in her arm?”

“So named by her,” Rasaan nods. “It began as nothing more than a mark in the palm of her hand.”

“Will it continue to grow?” she asks with apparent concern.

“Not with the Breach stilled. The two are intrinsically tied, but the Anchor is the key, as your Commander put it. The mechanism of control. The… anchor,” he finishes with a slight, graceful shrug.

“How has the magic affected her?” Solas asks. At Rasaan’s look, he clarifies, “The Breach sundered the world. Such destruction can only have been born from a truly immense power. I cannot imagine anyone bearing it without terrible cost, and she does not look well.”

“It has nearly killed her,” the Arishok says flatly.

This hangs heavy in the air for a long moment.

“That is the true reason behind your haste, then.” It isn’t a question. Solas pauses, considering.

“What are you thinking?” Hawke asks. So far, he has been watching all of this in silence.

Solas looks up at him, then glances to the Qunari and back. “I do not believe her responsible.”

Hawke, too, glances at the Qunari, but apparently decides to throw discretion to the wind. “Because?” he prompts.

“Simply put, no fool could wield this power the way she does, and only a fool would have tried to claim it.”

“Unless she simply bungled whatever plan she had in the first place,” Leliana says.

“And fled to the _Qun_ wielding alien magic?”

“Perhaps that was not where she meant to go.”

“”This is a waste of time,”” Arishok growls at Rasaan. “”You ask them to understand honor when they have none. They will spend days chasing shadows when the answer stands in front of them in full light.””

“No secrets in the fancy tent,” Hawke says flatly.

Rasaan sighs. “We are experiencing something of a clash of cultures, I’m afraid. He finds your suspicion wearying.”

“Then perhaps you might help us to understand,” Josephine suggests gently.

Rasaan regards her before answering, then takes in the others, looking for all the world as if he is trying to decide whether or not to answer at all.

“Do you know the name Koslun, Ambassador?”

“I am afraid I do not.”

“He was the first Qunari,” Hawke says, his gaze level on Rasaan. “The founder of their entire belief system. The structure of their society, everything they think and say and do, all goes back to a tome he wrote thousands of years ago. It was what the last Arishok holed himself and his men up in Kirkwall looking for.”

“Just so,” Rasaan says. “More still than that, however, Koslun gave us ourselves. He gave us freedom.”

Solas’s eyes go hard, but not even Rasaan notices.

“Before his teachings, we were a brutal people, slaves to our aggressions and appetites, and to say we had an excess of both would be putting it mildly. We warred with one another, with ourselves, and with other peoples. We were ruthless. Our history was written in blood, which we spilled eagerly and often, without thought or regret.

“Koslun’s teachings showed us a different way. They showed us that a world existed outside of ourselves. A greater something, an order to things. That we could be more than our lusts. Everything we are, our science and philosophy, our technology and wisdom, our safety and peace, our health of body and mind and of soul, we owe to Ashkaari Koslun. He was the first.”

“Ashkaari?” Cassandra asks, brows up.

Rasaan gives a dip of his chin. “In this context, it is not a name, a role, we bestow lightly. In fact, it has never, since we crossed the wide sea, been given to a living Qunari. In our entire history, which dates back much farther than any outsider would guess, beginning with Koslun, there have been four Qunari named Ashkaari, the Enlightened. This Ashkaari, she is the fourth, and only the second to carry the name while alive.

“Koslun made us everything we are. Everything we may become will be due to his wisdom and insight, to his purpose. This Ashkaari… she is young, in many ways. In many more, she has the soul of one who has walked this world for countless lifetimes, looking to the sea and stars, seeing into the hearts of mountains and reading the tides, learning the pulse of the earth. If it is possible for our people to have a prophet, we believe she may be that person.

“We have not told her as much, and though I believe she has put it together on her own,” he pauses and smiles, a warmth in his eyes that seems exclusive to mention of her, “I would ask that mention of it not leave this pavilion.

“Humility is important to our people. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that purity of purpose is important. Pride is a poison; all that matters is the work we do in this world, the part we play, and it is considered a grave disservice to lay something at the feet of another which may needlessly distract from who they are and what they are in the world to do. Her role does not change if she knows what is whispered about her, what is wondered, but such things may cause her mind to waver, or her will. Inflicting that upon another is tantamount to cardinal sin among Qunari. The greatest dishonor, or disservice, you could visit upon them.”

He pauses and allows himself a deep breath.

“As I said, she will soon be awake and you will see and judge for yourselves what is true. But this is the answer to your question. Ashkaari is precious to us. Dearly so. She is a piece of our hearts and our souls, and we place great trust in her, because she has earned great trust, even in so short a time. Why are we here? What do we ask?

“We are here because she bade us. We ask nothing, because she tells us it is in service to the Qun that we come. The Qun is all people. It is ourselves, and it is the world in which we walk.

“I know this is a foreign concept to you, ‘something for nothing,’ as you would call it. Yet _that_ is not a concept that exists to _our_ people. There is only need, and seeing the need met. That is the Qun. That is why we say there are only Qunari, and those who have not yet accepted the truth of the world, and so live in chaos and pain.

“The truth does not require your belief, just as the sun will rise without your faith in it. Ashkaari speaks for the Qun. For the storm, and the sun that comes after. For the rain that feeds us and the earth that sustains us. We listen, for that is our place.”

“So she is the reason you came,” Cullen summarizes. “Was she also the reason you delayed so long? You sent the Iron Bull to us months ago to monitor the situation, you had to have known this wouldn’t contain itself to Ferelden.”

The Arishok looks like he wants to say something decidedly undiplomatic, but Rasaan speaks first, possibly for that very reason.

“Oh, we left weeks ago,” he says brightly. “The missive offering aid was sent after we departed. Terribly rude, I know, but Ashkaari assured us you would accept.” He frowns. “Honestly, she was impossible to live with until the Arishok and Ariqun agreed.”

Arishok’s scowl deepens.

“As to why aid was not offered sooner, the simplest answer I can provide is that she was not ready.”

“You just said she came to you ready,” Cullen says. “And that the Anchor was killing her.”

“You misunderstand,” the Arishok says bluntly. “It is not your fault, your language is simply crude.

“Members of the Beresaad and Ben-Hassrath train for years before being deemed prepared to withstand the assault of your cultures. The chaos and madness of your people and your way of life are difficult to tolerate and virtually impossible to understand. Most Qunari are not fit even to make the attempt.

“Ashkaari has been in this world a matter of months; it was my wish she remain in Par Vollen, but the Qun demanded our departure. Many exceptions have been granted for her.” He sounds sour about it, but at the same time, if a thing like concern can be said to be manifest in a person like him, it is.

“‘In this world a matter of months?’” Leliana asks. “What do you mean?”

“Precisely what I said, Leliana.”

“It’s something we don’t fully understand,” Rasaan explains. “She came to us as you see her, gifted with language and foresight, and knowledge of our oldest wisdom. She requires very little sleep, or food, or drink, and as near as we can tell, she feels almost no pain, at least not as we know it. There are other things about her too numerous to name. She has a resistance to raw lyrium on par with that of the dwarves, for instance. She is… an evolved being,” he says, as if it can be no more or less simple than that. As if he has accepted it at the same time he is stymied by it. “Known and unknown. But by her own declaration, she did not exist before she came to us.”

Rasaan has an exceptional sense of smell, so much so that he can sometimes, in cases of very strong emotion, detect what a person is feeling. He has been called on often by the Tamassrans to try and pass the trait on, and it is only because of it that he is aware of the _rage_ which flares in Solas, like smoke burst into flame, only to be quashed entirely the next instant. But for the intensity of the feeling, Rasaan would wonder if the Bas himself was aware of it, because nothing shows on his face, nothing in his posture. Rasaan can only conclude that the man is not what he appears. A conversation will need to be had with Hissrad.

“That is… astonishing,” Josephine says, pulling Rasaan’s full attention back to the conversation.

“If it is true,” Leliana says.

“It is,” the Arishok says bluntly.

Leliana studies his face while the rest of the room goes quiet once more.

Josephine says, “Earlier, you called the Commander and Seeker Pentaghast something. Basalit-an, I believe it was.”

"A term for a respected foreigner," Hawke supplies. He has again been watching all of this in silence. "Someone outside the Qun who isn't _entirely_ hopeless. The Arishok in Kirkwall called me Basalit-an before the end. Not something that carried over to the new regime, apparently."

Rasaan smiles at him, for every appearance warm. "Ashkaari told us. You have her respect, but she said it may take us... how did she put it?" he asks the Arishok.

"Time," the other man replies, ebullient as ever.

"Yes," Rasaan says with a smile in his voice. "Something about your sense of humor."

Hawke doesn't buy for a moment that Rasaan doesn't remember the conversation verbatim. The man has some of the sharpest intelligence he has ever seen. Brighly, he says, “My sense of humor is delightful. I had the last Arishok positively beside himself,” he adds, droll.

He pretends to ignore the look from Cassandra that warns of imminent murder and says, "What I’d like to know, aside from the vitally important things you refuse to tell us, is how exactly this woman knew the Inquisition would accept help before we did. From Qunari. With open arms. Not exactly a good deal of amicability between our people, and I know you knew I was here.”

Rasaan smiles, a warm, soft expression. “I don’t expect you’ll believe the answer until she has a chance to prove it, but Ashkaari is a seer of sorts.”

Hawke snorts inaudibly.

“She knows much of the world, and more to the point, much of what has yet to come. She told us a good deal about all of you, in fact, as well as others who will join your number before this is done. That is how we know you,” he looks at Cullen and Cassandra, “to be Basalit-an. It is how we know each of you is remarkable and capable. She has told us how and why the Breach was formed, how it will be closed, and the great threats being posed to your people from the shadows.

“In fact, she gave us the names of people she hoped you might begin locating, as well as resources you should begin to source, in case she was rendered unconscious by halting the Breach’s growth and couldn’t ask you herself. She said you would be unlikely to act upon them until she proved herself, but that you should be provided the information none the less.”

“...What is the information?” Leliana asks.

“The materials are too numerous to name, but here is what she wrote for you.” He hands a piece of folded parchment to the Spymaster, who gives it a quick read and passes it to Josephine. Minerals, herbs, leather and cloth, skilled labor, and building materials, mostly, things they would have already gone in search of, but some which seem at best to be random. They are organized under headers, some of which make no sense.

“The list of people is a good deal more modest, fortunately. A dwarven woman by the name of Dagna, an expert in magical theory and application. Ashkaari said she will prove invaluable to your cause, and that she should begin studying red lyrium immediately. I was told you met her, Nightingale, as you worked to end the last Blight. At the time, Queen Theirin arranged an apprenticeship in the Ferelden Circle for her, where she began her studies, and gained her father’s permission for her departure. Not a modest feat, I was told.”

“Kadan possessed what the southerners refer to as a ‘silver tongue,’” the Arishok says. “She could be very persuasive. When that failed, she hit with impressive skill.”

Leliana is speechless.

“The other she was most concerned with is a former Templar by the name of Samson,” Rasaan continues, looking at Cullen and Hawke. “Ashkaari said you were acquainted with him for a time.”

“Unfortunately so, yes,” Cullen admits, his opinion of the man obvious. “He was a coward and a traitor.”

"Agree to disagree," Hawke says, arch, but clearly serious.

“Didn’t he help kidnap one of your friends?” Cullen asks, incredulous.

“I’d recommend this box be left sealed and chained and thrown to the bottom of the sea, Knight Captain.”

If his pointed use of Cullen’s old title isn’t enough, something like brittle fury deep behind his eyes certainly is.

Rassan smiles, and it looks almost sad. “Ashkaari spoke of his tale. She made him sound like something of a tragic figure.”

Cullen’s opinion of that is obvious, too.

“She made no excuses for his choices, I assure you. Such is not our way. Fortunately, it is not his service she recommends, but rather retaining him to prevent something worse.”

“Something worse than what?”

“A piece of the larger picture, something best left until she wakes. In the meantime, we were told you may wish to rebuild Haven if feasible. We have no artisans with us, but you will find no better laborers than those among the Beresaad. They will help in any way you require, and will do so without complaint.”

The Arishok folds his arms over his chest, but is otherwise inscrutable.

“That’s… generous,” Cullen allows. “But the entire area is overrun. Sending anyone in, even soldiers, is a death sentence until those Rifts get closed.”

“She will see to that when she wakes,” Rasaan assures them.

“We are grateful for the assistance,” Leliana says. “More than we can say. But we need time to discuss all of this first.”

Rasaan gives a courtly, appropriately modest half-bow. “Of course.” Arishok’s jaw twitches.

“In the meantime, I wonder if you might address another rumor. When Ashkaari was found in your city, she was not alone?”

“No,” the Arishok replies flatly.

“Details, please, old friend.”

The Arishok reports dryly, “A figure was seen behind her in what you call the Rift. It glowed green and white and appeared to be a human female with bright eyes and a tall head, squared at the top. By some accounts it was nearly blinding. It remained until the antaam began to arrive in substantial number.”

Leliana exchanges a glance with Cassandra.

“What else did it look like, this figure?”

“Were you not listening?”

Leliana purses her lips. “I suppose there is some small comfort in knowing some things do not change.”

“We have other information depending on what you have accomplished so far,” Rasaan says. “This ties into the maps, actually. She marked them with anything that might be of interest to you - dangers and resources, helpful contacts and potential agents. She mentioned that certain details may be in flux with the way events have proceeded. I assume by the state of your collected mounts you have not connected with the horsemaster, Dennet, in the Hinterlands?”

This is met by a stymied silence.

“We can’t exactly house a mounted unit in tents,” Cullen says.

The Arishok looks something that might be called disdainful, but Rasaan simply nods, accepting the answer.

“I have a list of the tasks he will require in exchange for agreeing to assist the Inquisition. Did you have a presence at the meeting of clerics in Val Royeaux?”

“It was pieced together very quickly,” Josephine says, sounding almost uncomfortable. “By the time we received any word, it was too late to arrive in time.”

Again Rasaan nods. “I assume then that the Chantry Mother Giselle did not contact you from the Crossroads in the Hinterlands?”

Again, Leliana and Cassandra exchange a look.

"She reached out to us," Leliana explains. "But the situation in the Hinterlands devolved quickly, and she was killed before we could reach her."

The tension finally seems too much even for Rasaan. “...You have my sympathy for your loss. Ashkaari said she was a voice of reason among your people." He pauses and suggests, "Perhaps we should wait on anything further until she can discuss it with you herself. I should be checking on her, in any case.” Without waiting for any sort of reply from anyone, he says, “Solas, if you would like to accompany me, you may begin studying the Anchor.”

A muscle in the Arishok’s jaw twitches again. Rasaan says soft words to him in Qunlat, and his only reply is to turn and leave.

Rasaan nods for Solas to follow him out. Bull is dismissed not long after, then Hawke leaves of his own accord. The others remain in discussion as the sun stretches the length of the sky. The maps, when they open them, certainly don’t help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 10/10/18: Mother Giselle now killed before the Inquisition could speak to her. Consequence of the new world state (a spilling over of the fighting between the mages and Templars into the Crossroads, I assume. It was a concern of the Advisors in the game that that very thing would happen if the Herald didn't make it out there to stabilize things soon)  
> 2/19/19: Updates to story as before, quality notice as before.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rando Leliana lore (™) in this chapter is from her Origins DLC. Which I did not actually play. She annoyed the crap out of me in the first game.
> 
> Dorothea = Justinia (her name before becoming the Divine)
> 
> Think of text in brackets [like this] as subtitled translations.
> 
> -
> 
> New vocab:
> 
>  **Ataas:** Meaning unknown. Stand-in for “please.”  
>  **Kith:** A small military unit| A squad or company  
>  **Parshaara:** Enough  
>  **Qunoran vehl:** A Qunari so perfectly Qunari that others should seek to emulate them. The title is only bestowed posthumously, otherwise it would risk corrupting their humility (per Sten in Dragon Age: Origins).
> 
> Elvhen, which I will always butcher horribly:
> 
>  _Elvhen:_ Ancient elves, as opposed to “elves/elven," the modern variety. I don’t think the spelling difference is canon, more a fanfic community thing.  
>  _Isalal atisha inor aman:_ I desire peace between us.
> 
> \- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

She opens her eyes slowly and sees pale, waxed canvas, lit from behind by a winter sun. She smells him next to her and smiles. Her vitaar is fresh, not an hour old; he must have known she was waking and gone to work at it.

““How long?”” she asks.

““...Nine days,”” Rasaan answers. His tone is as peaceable as ever, but she hears the tension under it that he doesn’t want to burden her with. He was worried.

It isn’t a surprise how long she stayed down. The Breach is a vast thing now, and the Anchor no longer a scratch among the folds of her palm.

She almost reaches out to give his hand a reassuring squeeze, but to do so would show a lack of faith in him, in his strength, and that is not something she feels.

She sits up and Rasaan is there, a hand behind her back should she need the support. He settles next to her, their shoulders touching, and she takes in her surroundings, giving them both a moment.

Another scent is heavy in the space. Woodsmoke and magic. An elf, male. ““...Who is that?””

““The bas saarebas. It is his tent.””

She looks at him in surprise, but he just shrugs.

““He told us nothing about the Anchor we did not know.””

She makes a sound of acknowledgement and takes his hand, resting her forehead on shoulder. She hadn’t been entirely certain Solas’s work would be allowed, despite her request.

““How do you feel?”” he asks in a murmur.

She smiles to herself. ““Not like I’m dying with any longer. And the Anchor is....” she pauses, stretching her arm out and moving it about, testing. ““Painless.”” She turns a wondering smile on him and he returns it with warmth.  
  
““Good.””

““What is he like?”” she asks curiously. ““Solas.””

His smile changes to the one she knows so well, the one that looks like you’re missing a joke and he loves you for it. ““Go and see for yourself.””

She stands, lifting her arms above her head to stretch. He’s braced to steady her in case she gets dizzy. ““After I see to the....”” She frowns and sits back down, just for a moment, lightheaded after all. “”Rifts.”” She was going to say “Rift,” but the area is peppered with them. ““Exactly how bad is it?””

““Not eve our scouts can’t reach Haven to assess the damage. Apparently their numbers increased parabolically. Exponentially after the first four weeks. The entire area is overrun.””

She takes that in, and her thoughtfulness turns too quickly into a smile. She tries to hide it by turning to the side under the guise of looking at her gear, neatly folded atop a small, unvarnished dresser, but she obviously does a poor job of hiding her eagerness.

Rasaan says with pointed brightness, ““Arishok and his party are ready to leave whenever you are.””

She does not hide her displeasure. ““I’ll move faster without them.””

““And that is of course the _only_  reason you wish to go alone.””

Ashkaari pulls a face, subdued and elegant. ““They don’t let me have any fun, Rasaan. Curiosity is in my nature. He won’t let me look as I wish to.””

““Nor should he. You know better than to consider any demon.””

She growls quietly to herself. ““They are not so simple.””

He stands and leans in, a hand on either side of her legs at the edge of the cot.

““We have spoken of this,”” he says quietly.

““I fail to understand why some of my instincts are heeded and others ignored.””

He smiles. “”You are young yet.”” He places a kiss to her shoulder and stands, hands going to his hips.

She wants to argue. ‘I am a horse you refuse to allow to run, a weapon you refuse to unsheath.’ ‘Now that I’m healthy, my needs are going to increase, I can already feel the heat under my skin. Pent-up energy will make it worse.’

Those are true, but not the real reason, and they would both know it. She has an unhealthy fascination with the denizens of of the Fade. It makes a certain amount of sense, but the fact remains that it is an ill-conceived interest.

““A patronization if ever I have heard one,”” she grumbles impotently. ““Fine. But I will wait for him outside of the camp. I am not ready for the stares.””

““And you think this will prepare you?””

She gives him a look.

It only makes him smile more widely. ““Enjoy the time. The others are eager to hear from you.””

““Yes,”” she says, feigning an arch tone.

““Let me guess who has checked on me most often.”” Bas scents linger at the entrance of the tent, and a scant few inside. ““Solas I now recognize. The Iron Bull has been by?”” She asks in surprise. That one is easy. Qunari and foreign scents settled into one.

Rasaan nods, mirth in his eyes at the game.

Next to the scents of Rasaan and Solas, a human woman’s is the most prevalent. She is attractive, confident, armored in… onyx? Someone of faith, with a mild undercurrent of spice. ““Cassandra?””

Another nod.

There have been two male humans, one dominant and commanding, but kind, and sleep deprived well above what she would expect. ““Cullen.””

Rasaan’s smile widens.

She hums a little. ““He smells good,”” she says. The tiredness permeates everything, not to be mistaken for the considerable weariness. Strength of character, honesty, sadness, earth, and a distant undertone of lyrium.

Rasaan’s lips quirk down almost imperceptibly.

The other man, she does not recognize. He is dominant like the other two, older than Cullen, and smells even better. But.... she frowns before she can catch herself; he isn’t attracted to women. She reaches deeper for the scent, searching, but-- ““The last one is too stale, he hasn’t been by in days. But given who we know is here....” She shuffles through the dossier in her mind and… ah, there it is. A faint smell, but definitely canine. ““Garrett Hawke.””

His smile broadens and he gives a final nod. ““Well done, kadan.””

Ashkaari rolls her eyes, but she can’t help her own smile. She’s ridiculous whenever he praises her, she always has been.

As she rises and goes to her gear, Rasaan makes the reason for his brief displeasure known: ““Should I have a Tamassran ready when you return?””

Her hand stills around securing a simple, long leather bracer to her forearm. Rasaan approaches and takes it from her without a word, deftly seeing to its fastenings. Rasaan looked after her belongings as she slept, of course he did. He is her heart, and she his. But as she watches his fingers move, her sense of smell tells her someone else cleaned and oiled her armor while she slept - Arishok.

A Qunari’s spirit lies in the tools of their trade. Her armor is herself. To have someone else see to its care… she had no idea she meant something to him personally. The honor and consideration gives her pause.

She’s going to be surrounded by men and women she knows. People she has loved. She has lived in marriage with some of them, and has known almost every one of them carnally. The wisdom of his suggestion is apt, as it ever is, but for the first time, it rankles.

Concerning.  
  
““...Yes,”” she murmurs in answer. ““A man. Someone with stamina.”” She pauses, then sighs. “And a woman. Someone strong, if we have one.” Cassandra is already going to be a problem, she can tell. Even recalling the way she smells forces Ashkaari to stop, close her eyes, and take a moment to find herself again. The change in her scent doesn’t cause Rasaan any difficulty, and that is as ever a warm comfort, solid and thick and sure.

He finishes the fastenings on her second bracer before looking up at her, and waits until he has her attention.. ““You are prepared for this, Kadan.””

She can’t quite look him in the eye. Idea and reality are never precisely the same. She was prepared, yes, but mental preparation can only take one so far.

Rasaan pulls her in and presses his forehead to hers - a common gesture of closeness between Qunari, but it bears special meaning to her when Rasaan does it, because it was he who first showed her. It was how he welcomed her into the world.

She returns the gesture by putting her hand on the back of his neck and holding on a little too hard, mindful not to hurt him. For long minutes, they stay like this, her soaking in the comfort and certainty he offers, the reminder of who she is, of her place in this world. Rasaan has never lied to her, never once coddled her, and he tends to see the truth in others. She is certain he will be named qunoran vehl upon his death. If he believes in her, then she is worth believing in.

Finally, she releases him with a long exhale. ““What have you told them?””

Rasaan recounts the Information he provided during their only meeting with the Inquisition, and when he gets to the part about the spirit in the Rift Ashkaari appeared from - though he says they gave the no information on it beyond a physical description - Ashkaari says, ““I’m surprised Leliana has not come, then.”” She pauses, and adds with a quirk of her lips, ““Then again, no I’m not. It’s Leliana.””

““She is impressive,”” Rasaan admits. ““From what I can tell, they all are.””

Ashkaari smiles fondly to herself.

““You are eager to see them.””

““And nervous. I feel like a child.””

““A nervousness shared by them. They are more lost than you expect. Solas, though.... I would have been curious about him even without what you told us. I don’t want to risk tainting your own impression, but you’ll like him, I think. He is thoughtful. And more quiet than the rest of them.  ...Usually.””

““Meaning?””

““Meaning he speaks when he has something to say,”” he says, not bothering to hide his mirth, or clarify the double meaning.

““...Judgey, though,”” he adds, tongue-in-cheek.

She laughs.  
  
He steps back and takes in the length of her appearance. ““We will no doubt speak of him after you become acquainted. Your hair?””  
  
““Stays down for now. One shock to the system at a time.”” She’s watching his face while he takes in her outfit. ““Is it truly so bad?””

““No. But it is entirely unsensible. You’ll be looking to set fire to it after a week on the road.”” Mournfully he says, ““I almost wish Qunari gambled.””

She smiles to herself. It would be Arishok who took the bet, and even if Rasaan was right and she came to loathe the upkeep, she would sooner peel off her own skin than allow Arishok to think less of her by permitting such a defeat.

More seriously, Rasaan says, ““It suits you, but I am still not certain why. A strange feeling.””

She wears a top similar to that of the antaam saar, but its fabric reaches farther down her sides and covers more of her shoulders and chest than the norm. The trousers are of a heavier material and more Southern in their cut, and like the traditional ropework and accents, the stylized loincloth is absent. A long, sleeveless jacket is worn open, accented in places with lines of gold. Modest adornments were added to speak of what the Bas will see as her station.

It’s a little pandering and certainly ostentatious, but the overall effect is of Qunari clothing, tailored to pay some respect to Bas sensibilities of style and modesty.

The “entirely unsensible” part is that it’s white as fresh snow in an open field. Her vitaar matches, and helps to detract from what open expanse of skin remains. The fabric has been treated, but still requires daily washing or spot-treatment. She considers it an act of dedication and remembrance.

Ashkaari smiles wryly. ““It will remind me of the line I must walk.”” A little frown works its way onto her face and she adds, ““The compromise I must somehow manage between us and them.””

He smiles lopsidedly and tips his chin toward the exit. ““Go. Enjoy yourself.””

She grins, excited, and ducks outside. It takes her a moment to adjust to the change in light, as a person of common senses would need to when stepping from a dark room into full sun.

She nods in greeting to the men guarding the tent and claps one on the arm as she passes, saying as she does, ““Inform Arishok I wish to leave.””

She heads for the nearest edge of the encampment, ignoring the people already stopping in their duties to stare at her. She’d like to blame the abundance of crisp white fabric, but if anything it should provide some camouflage - unsurprisingly, Pride’s tent is on the outskirts of the camp and surrounded by far more snow than canvas.

No, it’s more likely the striking contrast of the color - both from her outfit and the generous amount of thick, straight hair left hanging freely - against richly-hued middle-dark skin.

That, and the fact that she’s nearly seven feet tall and two broad, generous handfuls of... _woof,_  as Sera would put it.

She smiles to herself, just a little.

 

*     *     *

 

The first Rift is short minutes away on horseback. She stuns what few demons are nearby, stands back as the others dispatch them, and seals the wound in the veil. They close four Rifts close to the forward camp and run a wide swath in the general direction of Haven. As they move away from the Inquisition camp, Ashkaari is permitted to join in the fighting.

Unfortunately she finds she was right in her assumption; as the day wears on, it gets more and more difficult to control a sense of growing… frustration. Combat helps at first, but when that becomes just another way she has to hold back, it only ends up exacerbating the problem.

Arishok loses his patience once he’s the only one left undistracted, and orders her to go meditate in private until she has herself under control. This proves impossible, so they cut the trip short and head back to camp. She gives her horse over to the others and elects to run back on foot. The kith has to push their mounts to keep up with her.

 **  
**Her libido is so exacerbated by the time they return that she doesn’t even have a glance to spare for the Inquisition group waiting for them. She goes straight to her tent with a look they can only interpret as fury, and so thoroughly wears down first the female Tamassran, then the man, that a third has to be sent in.  
  
She’s long hours sequestered away, and her people won’t tell anyone why she’s awake, and back, but refuses to speak to them, or what’s wrong with her. The Qunari don’t _act_  like anything is wrong, really, but while she’s shut away they seem unusually attentive of her space, even as they stand like statues or tend to their gear or duties.

The Arishok seems to snap at anyone whose focus is too long diverted, and without exception they’re sent to do something in another part of the camp. At one point, Rasaan calmly endures what looks like the Arishok’s version of a tirade.  
  
It gets easier to wait once the Inquisition’s scouts confirm that she and her people closed no fewer than twenty-two Rifts in a handful of hours. Easier, if no less worrying. Reports had her looking hale when she quietly left camp earlier, and Rasaan said the Anchor should have settled with the Breach calm, but obviously something about it still troubles her. Greatly, if the distressing sounds that are occasionally heard from Solas’s tent are any indication. They might consult him, but he seems to have vanished shortly after her return.

 

*     *     *

 

When the air is gold with setting sun and Ashkaari’s stupor passed, when she has cleaned and eaten and Rasaan is certain she has taken the sudden onset and severity of need in relative stride, she emerges to find everyone biding their time waiting for her.

So strange, seeing faces for the first time when she already knows them so well. It hurts more than she expected, gazing upon loved ones and knowing they see only a stranger.

 

*     *     *

 

The moment they’re in the command pavilion, Ashkaari asks to borrow Josephine’s noteboard. As she scribbles things down, tearing off pieces of paper, folding them, and handing them out to the others one by one, she explains: “I expect you to take nothing about me on faith, and as I have a good deal to tell you that will require just that, I offer you proof of what I know before we begin.”

Cassandra’s note reads:

 

> _I plan on requesting a continuation of Swords and Shields from Varric. He will never know it is for you._

 

The Seeker blushes scarlet and crumples the paper, looking somehow both murderous and mortified. For a reason neither she nor Askkaari plan to clarify, Cassandra turns a murderous glare at Varric.  
  
“Whoa,” he protests, “what did I--?”  
  
“You’ll be fine, it’s not you she’s angry at,” Ashkaari assures calmly, her pen not so much as pausing.

Cullen darts a wide-eyed doubletake between his note and the Qunari woman before the lines of his face turn somber:

 

> _The day you left for training, your brother spoke to you on the docks where you sometimes went for a moment to yourself. He had a coin of Andraste in his pocket and gave it to you for luck._
> 
> _Despite the order’s ban on such things, and your singular loyalty and commitment, to this day you have kept it as a talisman of sorts. It is currently in a hidden pocket over your left rib, third from the bottom, tucked under your armor._

 

Leliana regards her note in silence. She grants herself the privacy of looking at no one, her eyes grim and distant and, at one point, deeply sad.

 

> _After your defeat of Raleigh and Marjoline, you returned alone to the Chantry. You gave alms, greeted Dorothea, and stood before a statue of Andraste, where you had a thought: “All things change when they find purpose.”_
> 
> _I ask you to remember this._
> 
> _Justinia left you a final gift. You will find it in the cloister in Valence. Notice of it is delayed and will not find its way to you for several months, but you do not need to wait._
> 
> _If she finds you there, think carefully before killing her. Your ability to do what needs to be done is invaluable - but so is the heart that has been both a blessing and a curse to you._
> 
> _We are our choices, and our desires. And sometimes we are our actions regardless of the spirit in which they are done._
> 
> _Your life is your own. Your choices are your own._
> 
> _Allow yourself the chance to surprise yourself once more._

 

Hawke’s face goes positively glacial as he regards his.

 

> _You let him live._
> 
> _When you asked for privacy that day, the others assumed it was so you could say goodbye, given what he had meant to you. They assumed you ended him in that alley and then left him there to burn. You never saw a reason to correct them._ _  
> _ _  
> _ _I will tell no one._

 

“Do your people know?” he asks lightly. He doesn’t look up until she starts to answer, and when he does, the scrutiny behind his eyes is knife sharp.

Again, Ashkaari doesn’t look up, and again, she doesn’t stop writing. “Had I given them every detail of everything I know - the fact that the sky was unseasonably blue the day you arrived in Kirkwall, for instance, especially for a port town - we never would have left Par Vollen. What is important to us is often meaningless to others.”

He studies her until she stops, tears away another sheet of paper, folds it, and hands it to Vivienne. Unease is starting to ripple through the tent with each new one she passes out.  
  
Calmly, Hawke opens the door of a nearby lantern and sets his note on fire, his face unreadable as he watches it burn without so much as blinking. He doesn’t drop it until nothing but the smallest corner is left.

After Vivienne first skims her note, then slows down to take in every word, she looks up with open suspicion.

 

> _No cure you find will work, but the one which requires the heart of a snowy wyvern will allow you the chance to say goodbye._ _  
> _ _  
> _ _My people may know more. If you wish, our healers in Par Vollen are ready to receive details on his condition. I can promise nothing, of course, but they have knowledge and medicines unknown to the outside world., and will help however they can._

 

For the first time, Ashkaari hesitates just a moment before beginning the next one. By the time she gives it to Blackwall, the silence in the pavilion has grown leaden, and dread licks up from his stomach and over his jaw.

 

> _Some bear the weight of heavier sins than others._
> 
> _You have set fire to yourself to burn away poison. Your pursuit is a noble one._
> 
> _Redemption is possible, and does not require you to believe yourself worthy or deserving._
> 
> _When you are ready, Thom, you will have my support._
> 
> _Whether or not you believe yourself worthy or deserving._
> 
> _Each man makes his own choice. This is mine._

 

“These will require some looking into,” Ashkaari says as she hands Varric a note explaining his publisher’s skimming and the fake sequel to Hard in Hightown, and Josephine information on the contract against her family’s trade with the House of Repose and her family’s pending intent to engage her to a young Antivan noble.

“If any of you find the information insufficient, I can provide more, but it will be much less pleasant to recall.”

“You have nothing for the rest of us?” Solas asks.

Ashkaari smiles at him. “Which is my proof. Cole,” she looks at the “young man,” “knows my intent, even if the Anchor makes me difficult to see into. Hawke believes me, which for now is enough for Fenris; as with Sera, he will suspend disbelief for the greater good, and what will matter in the end is who I show myself to be, not what I say. _You,”_ she goes on, circling back around to Solas, “would remain suspect no matter what I might say. And I find your contrary nature....” she pauses to find the right word. “Grounding.”

“I shall endeavor to live up to your expectations.” He sounds only a _little_  sarcastic. “But what of The Iron Bull?” He is arch and absolutely sarcastic this time, but he schools it under a perfect facsimile of civility.

“Don’t need it,” Bull grunts. “Or want it,” he mutters to himself.

“Not strictly true,” she says, “but....” She holds an evident hand out to the larger man.

“Of course,” Solas says. “Why would a Qunari need anything but the word of a superior?”

Bull rolls his eye unreservedly.

“Actually,” Ashkaari says brightly, “that is based upon a false supposition. No Qunari, regardless of function or office, is superior or inferior to any other. That was hardly your point, however, and I am not one to twist words.” Something behind her eyes turns teasing. “I also know there _are_  no words in this world or any other that could convince you a Qunari is capable of independent thought, so I see no reason to try at present.”

“At present?” Solas asks.

Rasaan is watching this exchange with growing interest.

She shrugs. “I like to keep an open mind, and I hardly know _everything.”_

“Yet you clearly know enough,” Cullen says, arms folded over his chest.

“Was there a more gentle way I could have done it? We have important things to discuss, and unless you believe I know of what I speak, lives and time will be wasted. Doubly so when a sense of guilt settles later over everything that has gone horribly wrong and you torment yourself with thoughts of, ‘If only we’d listened.’ Guilt is wasted on good men, who tend to be the only ones who bother listening to it in the first place.”

Cullen just shakes his head, grossly unhappy, but stymied.

“How _do_ you know all this?” Varric asks, his note held up between two fingers. “I’ve met a few supposed seers in my time, no offense,” he adds to Rasaan and the Arishok, “but even the one who was decent was just a good con artist. If this is true, it’s some seriously next-level shit.”

“It is. And I was born knowing much.”

“Born?” Solas asks.

“It rolls off the tongue more lightly than ‘Spat out onto my stomach through a tear in spacetime,’” she replies.

“And before that?” Hawke prompts.

She shrugs. “Nowhere. Everywhere. Where does any life come from?”

“Don’t tell me they don’t teach Qunari about the birds and the bees,” Varric says.

“You know the mechanics, so you think you know the miracle? Explaining a thing does not make it any less so. Children come from wombs. I am no different. Mine was simply of another sort than the one you’re used to.”

Varric mutters something droll to himself, but otherwise offers no further argument.

“Do you know what the Breach is?” Cassandra asks. Her tone is pressing.

“Yes,” Ashkaari answers easily. “As do you. Solas has told you as much.”

“What I mean is,” she says, urgency coming out as impatience, “do you know how to _close_ it?”

Ashkaari nods elegantly.

“And?” Leliana prompts. Her face is inscrutable.

“You have templars and mages among you. Mages can bolster the Anchor--”

The Arishok says four sharp words - sharp for him, anyhow - and her lips purse for a scant moment, but otherwise she shows no sign that she even heard him.  
  
“--and Templars can suppress the Breach. Obviously my people have a clear preference, but given the size of the Rift, it is likely that sufficient numbers from both sides will be required to succeed. Before that can be done, however, there is a complication which must be addressed.”  
  
“Of course there is,” Hawke murmurs. “Spit it out.” Gone from him is any sense of joviality. He is all bared steel under the sauntering tone, and there is a deep, pressing weariness and anger in him that has nothing to do with Ashkaari’s note. It is an old thing, settled over years into a shell of salt.

She darts a glance at Fenris before giving a sideways look toward Arishok and Rasaan, and waits until she feels permission from them.

“You know him as Corypheus,” she says.

“Coryph-- The insane Magister we killed in the Warden’s prison?” Varric asks, balking.

“Yes.” She briefly explains the means of his “immortality.”

“I recommend averting your eyes if ever you have the chance to watch,” she adds with some distaste. “So long as there are Wardens or darkspawn in the world, he is immortal.” As are the others.

“He gave himself the name ‘Corypheus,’ the ‘Conductor of the Choir of Silence,’” she says drily, “long ago, when he aspired to apotheosis with the others who pierced the veil and unleashed the Blight upon the world. But he was born as any other man, no better or worse. His given name is Sethius, and he is of the ancient Tevinter house Amladaris. The Breach is his doing, the Divine selected as a sacrifice for a powerful ritual that went wrong at its inception.

“Ultimately, his goals are to claim the godhood denied him, and restoration of the world to a state he recognizes: one of ultimate Tevinter supremacy. That was the goal of his ritual, one made possible by an artifact from the ancient world, a foci of incredible magical energy. Such artifacts are what the Tevinter empire owes its greatest advancements and powers to, its age of dominance. It was a very effective scavenger when it came to this land, picking over the bones of a dying creature far more powerful than it would ever be, even at its zenith. The Tevine assimilated magic and knowledge not their own and remade it to suit their beliefs. Even their gods became intermingled with what came before.

“This,” Ashkaari holds up her right hand, appearing for all the world to be made of nothing but flesh and bone now that the Breach is calmed, “was intended to be his. The other half of his machine, the key. But when the ritual was disrupted, it was inadvertently stolen, and what was meant to be his became mine instead.”

“Disrupted? So you _were_ there,” Cassandra says, ardent.

“No,” Ashkaari replies without hesitation. She clasps her hands behind her back to hide the clench of her fist. It’s no more than the phantom of a memory of pain and discomfort, but the others would see it as something else. “How I came to possess this I haven’t the slightest idea. But I do know the ritual was disrupted, or the world would look much worse than it does now.”  
  
They want to argue. She can smell it. But more than one set of eyes darts to Rasaan. Safe to guess, then, that he had the argument of her believability on her behalf while she recovered. Gratitude swells in her chest.

“Its power to seal the Rifts is the very least of what it can do,” she finishes.

“As we saw on the ground at the Temple,” Hawke says.

Ashkaari shakes her head. “A nothing. Truly. The Anchor holds the power to create what the world would see as a god. To heal or break it, to protect, to kill, to destroy or to build, to manipulate the very fabric of the world. It closes Rifts, yes, but it can also create them. At any time, I could open a stable portal of my own and step physically into the Fade. I could take others with me, if I so chose.”

This, of course, is met by a silence heavy with dread and horror.

“That is the complication. Not the Anchor, but the Conductor. So long as Sethius - call him what you like, but I have no desire to play into his delusion - has the foci, he can and will simply reopen the Breach. A would-be god has much to prove, and acting so brazenly against him will prick at his sense of pride. He will be quick to see any who defy him reduced to ash, and will bring his full force down upon your heads. By this point, I believe that to be not inconsiderable.

“That is the most visible problem, but he sews much farther afield than that. He gathers armies to himself, and you have seen his eager use of the corruption of red lyrium. There is no line he will not cross. _None,"_  she enunciates, weighted, to ensure they understand this part. “Plans are already in motion to cripple every nation in Thedas to make way for his empire.

“He allies himself with demons the likes of which this world has never known and hunts powers and relics long believed dead, if even a whisper of them remains in this age. He collects the angry and the wounded and the hungry, those who tire of living under the heels of masters, those who are desperate, and those who crave power as much as he does.”

Rasaan told her that templars and mages touched with red lyrium are already known quantities. She tells them what they don’t know: that it is being actively cultivated.

“There are secrets in this world that you cannot imagine, and he knows too many of them. He hunts them, twists them, bends them to his purpose. Unchecked, he will prove quite literally unstoppable. A god in effect, if not reality, as he is not truly immortal, but still cannot die.”

“...Start from the beginning,” Hawke orders, every line of him grim.

Ashkaari unspools the tale of another Thedas, one where the Qun did not intervene, and a Herald appeared among the rubble of their most sacred temple. She holds nothing back, spares no detail or tragedy, but touches on the myriad choices they could make in essence rather than detail, and stops with Sethius’s final defeat among the broken, floating pieces of the Temple of Sacred Ashes.

When it is done, Vivienne manages to speak first, her voice lowered and unreadable. “...That is a dire tale indeed.”

What’s strange is that Vivienne believes her, utterly and almost without reservation. She can smell it.

“But we _were_  ultimately successful,” Cassandra says. “We stopped him.”

“You did,” Ashkaari says softly. _At great cost_  goes unsaid, but heard all the same.

“And in every version of this tale,” Fenris observes, dry and rumbling, “you were someone’s holy figure.”

“No. This is the only version that I know of, in fact, where I have any involvement at all. Where I _exist_  at all. The Anchor would have belonged to whoever disrupted the ritual, whoever put their hand on the orb at precisely the wrong moment. Or the right one, depending on your perspective. It could have been anyone, any character or temperament, any age or gender, any race, any position in life.”

“But it was not,” Leliana says. “It was you.”

“In this world, yes. Perhaps there are others. I couldn’t truly say.” She smiles, and it seems sad. “This is the only one I have ever known.”

“But you said you _didn’t_ disrupt the ritual,” Cassandra argues.

“I did not,” Ashkaari confirms.

“So how did you acquire the Anchor?”

“At that I can only guess, and quite poorly.”

“...I believe this is where we take time to discuss amongst ourselves,” Hawke rumbles. “Make yourselves at home in the camp. I’d offer you the use of our soldiers to clear more Rifts if you’re up for it,” his eyes dart up and down Ashkaari, clearly noting her lack of tiredness, “...but of you wouldn’t take me up on it even if I did.”  
  
Ashkaari smiles at him, just a little, and looks at Arishok, who glances over her shoulder at Rasaan. He then has a brief exchange with the woman in Qunlat, and apparently satisfied by something, says, “We will take our forces and continue clearing a path to Haven in the morning. Rasaan will accompany us.

“If your soldiers are capable, they can follow behind and clear out any remaining demons. There will not be many.” He and Ashkaari have another brief exchange, and he adds, “The valley will be clear in three days. We will return then.”

He turns to leave, but Ashkaari stops him. “Wait.” she looks to the Advisors and Hawke. “You would prefer we be supervised, correct?”  
  
No one seems to want to out and admit it, but the answer is clear.

She smiles, just with her eyes. “Send someone with us.”  
  
Hawke considers her a moment, then smiles despite himself, and says as if smug, “You can take Sera.”  
  
The elf starts to bleat a protest, but Hawke cuts her off, “Shut it, woman.” He smiles at her with a cut of sarcasm. “You can thank me later.”  
  
She hunkers down into herself with a scowl, but can’t help darting a glance at the huge woman. Though it looks a little baleful.  
  
“And Cole,” Hawke adds as if thoughtful.

“No,” the Arishok says immediately.  
  
A few words are exchanged between him and Ashkaari in Qunlat, but he is intractable on this. Rasaan seems to take his side, in fact.  
  
“I can accompany them, if that would suffice,” Solas says. It’s the first time he’s said anything since Ashkaari passed out her notes.

He looks at Hawke, who nods, then says, “And no more substitutions. Varric will join you, too.”

“Three will slow us down too much,” the Arishok argues.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hawke says brightly. “I think you’ll find them surprisingly _spry._ Prone to bickering and decidedly insubordinate by your standards, but spry. Just keep the dwarf away from any especially threatening hills or overly deep snowbanks, and be sure to return him in like-new condition.”

Given how perfectly light his tone is, Ashkaari doesn’t know if she’s the only one who picks up on the fact that there’s a very sincere threat in there should they fail to do just that. Rasaan and Arishok don’t know exactly what Varric means to Hawke, after all. Not like she does.

“...Yeah, thanks for that, Hawke,” the dwarf deadpans.

“Any time. Now everyone kindly get the fuck out of my pavilion so we can talk about you behind your backs like civilized people.”

The Arishok gives him an unamused look, but the three Qunari make their way out.

Hissrad, Bull, remains behind. It eases something in Ashkaari’s chest, and answers at least one question for Hawke. Serves up a few new ones in its place, but that, at least, is familiar territory.

 

*     *     *

 

The night is deep when Solas finally exits the pavilion, the world bright from all the snow, and tinted green with the light of the Breach reflected off it. He finds her in the distance, watching him, as if her gaze is a sound that draws his attention.

She tips her head for him to follow, a solitary figure in the line of trees, then turns and vanishes into them. He hesitates, but makes his way.

Her footprints in the snow are clean and easy to follow, her steps sure. She leads him deep through the trees until they give way to a vast, open field of snow, and he finds her waiting with her back to him on the top of a hill overlooking the lake outside of Haven, watching tiny points of light move among its buildings. The village structures themselves appear intact, but even from here the forms of some of the brighter demons and wraiths can be seen pacing its streets, tiny points of light glowing like torches and veilfire. Rifts pepper the area. The town is a farce of what it should have been, gutted and haunted like too many things he has touched in his life.

Ashkaari stands with her hands folded behind her. There is an elegance and grace to her, even motionless.

When he nears, she says two words: “Fen’harel enansal.”

He comes to stand next to her, but says nothing. It seems the wisest course of action.

“You said I had nothing for you. No evidence. That wasn’t strictly true, I just didn’t want to give it to you in the pavilion. If you’d been able to ruminate over it that long, I thought there was a good chance that when the discussion was over, you’d walk away and vanish.” She looks at him, but not quite straight on. “I don’t want that to happen.

“It’s the passphrase you seek. ‘Fen’harel enansal.’ The one your friend was sent to get, the one which indirectly ended up costing him his life by your hand, alone in the woods that night.”

There is no accusation in her. No censure, no anger or pain. No judgement. It is that, more than anything, which freezes him to the spot.

She looks back at the scene below, at the light of the breach playing over the frozen ice, its deep fractures making it look like a massive gemstone in the middle of being cut and polished.

“You would have manually overridden the entire network once this mess was over, which is obviously something well within your capabilities, but I know that patience is not among your primary interests at the moment. Comically ironic under other circumstances.”

Finally, she turns to face him, her hands falling to her sides. “You are Solas. Pride. Fen’harel, the great rebel, the breaker of chains, savior and destroyer of the world many times over. Brilliant, arrogant, overconfident and wounded. Compassionate, some of your broader decisions notwithstanding. The orb used to create the Breach is yours. The magic in my arm that will eventually kill me should you choose not to intervene, is yours. I know what you intended in allowing Sethius to find it, and I know what you will do with it once the sky is whole and it is back in your possession.”

There is so much wrong here that for the first time in a long, long while, Solas does not know where to begin.

The Champion of Kirkwall said something after the Qunari company left this evening which is proving more apt than he might have guessed:

_There’s more to her than they think. A lot more, I’m willing to bet. She’s hiding things from them, and I want to know why._

“And the Qunari favor such a plan?” he asks as if arch.

She looks at him with a little smile and something like sympathy. “Playing dumb is painfully ill-suited to you, Pride.”

“I could say the same of you.”

Genuine confusion breathes over her face, but that little smile is still there. “I rather thought I was doing the opposite.”

If not for the lights in the distance, the expanse of white and green and brown might suddenly seem devoid of life.

“The world is not as it is meant to be,” she says simply. “You broke it to save it, I know that, and now you seek to restore it. The core of our teachings is that the world has an order and a natural state. It is what it is, and any attempt to disturb that or to deny it creates chaos and pain. Tell me, in your thousands of years of dreaming, have you not seen an abundance of both as a direct consequence of the veil? I know what you think of the people here, to say nothing of the way you mourn what was lost.”

Despite how forthright she seems, he feels there is something she isn’t saying.

“Your own people could be brutal. Unforgivably, abhorrently villainous. But _they_ were not the world, merely creatures in it, and their selfish actions created their strife. The veil is not meant to exist. I have much more regard for the life that has found its way into this world than you do, but if those here now must perish to restore the world to its proper order, that must come to pass.”

A touch of sadness clouds her eyes. “This is the one thing I have kept from my people, and I must continue to do so. I do not fear magic as they do, because I understand what they cannot. What they deny. I love them.” She smiles, a private thing, and he knows she means it with every fiber of her being. “But I am what I am. Ashkaari, the Enlightened. Ash, the Seeker. If following the truth means I must destroy those very people, I will do so. The world is not meant to be this way. I will die, too, I know this. But all things pass in their time. Even immortals.” She smiles at him, wry and sad and knowing, and for a moment he wonders. But only a moment, because the light in her eyes is wrong.

He considers her for a long time, and she lets him.

“This is a dangerous path you walk, then,” he says. “The Qunari do not forgive.”

“You do not know nearly so much about us as you think, Solas. You hate that which you do not bother to understand because the very idea of it so offends you. In this, you are no different than the Andrastians with their fear and loathing of magic and the Fade. Qunari appear so counter to your nature, so much the antithesis of everything you fought for, that even you have not troubled yourself to look too much past the surface. You stopped when you saw just enough to satisfy yourself that your worst assumptions were correct. Disappointing, but understandable. Something we may discuss another day, perhaps.” She looks back the way they came, her neck straight and high like a halla watching for a predator.

“To address your point, however.... There is no safe path for those who will change the world, and the world has only been so changed once before in all of its history. Warped, yes. Brutalized and twisted, yes, but not so changed as this, and unnatural change is always the worst. You will repair that. I will help you.”

He cannot help but shake his head at her. He cannot help but scathe, “Do you _truly_ believe yourself to have sprung fully formed from the Fade a matter of weeks ago?”

“Because that is something the world has never seen,” she says, wry and, he thinks, fondly amused.

“Not like this, no. It has not.”

“You don’t know everything. Not even you have seen all the mysteries the world holds. Nothing ever happens until it does,” she finishes simply.

“You are being obtuse.”

“You live and breathe impossibility, Pride, especially in this time. It is only a matter of perspective. But you are as your nature, and you claim too much knowledge of those impossibilities, if not literal responsibility for them - and I will thank you to consider the difference between accountability and culpability, despite the fact that you can have a remarkable lack of foresight - to see them with humility.” She pauses, and her gaze goes far away and a little crease forms between her brows. “But....”

When she goes on, her voice is thoughtful and quiet. “They gave me to a re-educator shortly after I came to them,” she admits. “Their best. I wonder sometimes....” She trails off, hesitating. “This is a thought I have shared only with Rasaan. I would appreciate your discretion. I wonder sometimes what they took when they helped me. I don’t _feel_ like I came from nothing. But perhaps that is simply what it feels like to come into being having context without itself. I feel the steady weight of the anchor in the water, mooring me, but I cannot see what holds it there.”

 _“Helped_ you?” Solas asks, appalled.

She smiles at him, small and warm. “Of course. I have faith in my people, Solas. I was in pain when I came to them, how could I not be? They took that from me. They helped me, they stripped away the scars and the confusion and they gave me to myself, whole and strong and sure. I can imagine no better feeling. Its lack is a suffering too many are plagued with from the moment they are born to the moment they die.”

He wants to shout at her, to shake her. But he cannot, it would do no good, so he injects all his anger into argument, instead. “It is not a flaw to question, it is a necessity! How much more to possess the simple ability to do so! How can you claim to know any truth when you do not even know your own nature?”

“I don’t know everything so I can’t know anything?” It’s as if she is _scolding_ him. “I question, Solas, I question _constantly._ That is not what I speak of. Parshaara, kadan, ataas. Isalal atisha inor aman. I do not wish to argue. Not with you.”  
[Enough, kadan, please. I desire peace between us.]

He feels as if he has swallowed an astringent, or perhaps dull knives. His eyes are wide. “Kadan?”

She waves, dismissing his question out of hand.

“You--” Mid-thought, he changes the question, and calms himself considerably, at least outwardly. “You speak Elvhen?”

Ashkaari looks at him, every bit as surprised as he had felt a moment ago, but not nearly as unsettled. It’s almost as if she hadn’t been aware she’d even used the language until he pointed it out.

“I don’t think so,” she says, baffled. “I knew a few words of Qunlat when I woke. By definition, at least. Phrases, passages of the Qun, the odd word. I _knew_ thousands, actually, as it turned out, but only what very few of them meant. I would have guessed the same of Elvhen.” She looks away, lost in thought.

“Ma ane tel’din sa ashala,” he says. “As’an’var dirth ma nadas ena’harel.”

Ashkaari looks back at him, brows up so high they set little waves in the smooth skin of her forehead. But the reaction isn’t right, not for what he said. She does not understand him.

He smiles at her. She won’t see the truth of it, only that it is genuine, and a little sad. “Perhaps not, then.”

“What did you say?” She sounds truly curious and mostly, he thinks, in the broader sense. She has a hungry mind, a taste familiar and dear to him. Its presence in her makes him feel, for a moment, less alone.

“I spoke of the importance of truth,” he says carefully.

“An ironic topic given the company, don’t you think?” She asks, wryly amused.

“Decidedly.”

“...So why don’t I believe you?”

“I am hardly at fault if you find yourself without a trusting nature, ha’falon.”

For a moment, she gapes at him. Fair to think she knows the word, then, or at least is capable of reading his intent.

She gives herself something of a shake, looking confused and perhaps slightly unseated, and goes on.

“There is one thing I need to know. You have plans to restore the world. Do you also have plans to deal with the larger problem?”

“If there is a problem more substantial than the Breach, an ancient magister in possession of god-like power, and the sundering of the world, that is dire indeed,” he says seriously.

She looks at him, grossly unamused. “You know what I’m talking about, Solas. The end you sought to stop. The thing released by your people, the growing poison. The _true_ sundering. You’re powerful. The Elvhen are powerful. But even the mightiest dragon may be brought down by enough ants, and they are legion. I know you’re clever, I know you have far sight, but I also know you are not immune to mistakes. The world will not survive another miscalculation like this, another piece of sand in one of your machines. I need to know you have a viable plan to fix the true problem before you unleash it.”

“Fair enough. Yes, I have a plan. Several, in fact. But they require power I do not yet possess. The power of the orb.”

“And more, I suspect. But of course you have a backup plan for all of that, and for the orb, too.”

He cannot tell if that is a challenge or a statement. Not from her, not with what she seems to know.

“It will be dealt with. I have sundered the world. Destroyed my people and everything I once cared for. I am intimately aware of my mistakes,” he says, heat entering his voice. “They cannot be correct without great cost, but I will do whatever is necessary to see the world restored and _safe._ On that, you have my word.”

She holds his eyes, her expression unreadable, then looks off into the distance. She nods, says, “I must return,” and does just that.

He watches her go for a time. When she is back among the trees, he says as if lightly, no more loudly than if she were still next to him and knowing she will hear every word regardless, “I look forward to our journey together. If your masters allow it, perhaps we may speak again.”

She shakes her head and huffs a little sigh. He thinks he hears a smile in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The friend mentioned in the last scene was an elvhen named Felassan, from one of the DA:I books (the only one I own - though I haven’t read it yet, that’s how I do - because damn if I don’t love that sassy elf). He was an old friend of Solas, sent to get the passphrase for the eluvian network. He got it, but didn't pass it on. In the course of his journey, however, he also came to see the people of the modern world as actual people. Solas couldn’t allow that, so he killed him. From behind, alone in the woods, without a word. It happened before the Conclave.
> 
> \- - -
> 
> 2/26/19: Updated as before, but quality should be a little closer to polished than in previous chapters <3  
> 3/7/19: Scene with Solas from OG version updated and added to end. Inner Circle debrief after they met Ash cut, but you can find the version I was tinkering with [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14562462/chapters/42582644#workskin) Story’s all up to date, ready for new stuff!


End file.
